While the Call of Duty franchise often marks a major sales milestone every time a new entry comes out, this time around, the title – Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 – has seemingly performed bellow expectations. Speaking to Eurogamer, Christopher Dring of The Game Business and Alinea Analytics head of market analysis Rhys Elliot discussed some of the reasons behind this year’s title underperforming, especially when compared to previous entries.
Dring believes that the daily active users metric for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has been lower than the series typically gets, especially shortly after launch. While he noted that last year’s Black Ops 6 did incredibly well, this time around, fewer players are engaging with the new entry. Elliot believes the reasons for this might just be a “combination of community burnout, questionable creative and business decisions by Activision/Microsoft, and strong competition.”
“One reason for the decline is the intense competition from rival shooters, mostly Battlefield 6 and ARC Raiders,” explained Elliot. “The new Battlefield title had a massive launch, securing the biggest opening in its franchise’s history. ARC has sold almost 8 million copies so far, and the latest Fortnite Simpsons crossover was a hit. Attention is scarce.”
“Players have expressed growing dissatisfaction with CoD‘s lack of innovation, feeling that the franchise is ailing. The introduction of Fortnite-like cosmetic items like non-military character skins (Beavis and Butthead, Nicki Minaj) has alienated a significant portion of the fanbase who prefer a more grounded military aesthetic. The co-op campaign was a major point of criticism. It was uneven and tedious when played solo, while also requiring an always-online connection. It also drew controversy and ire for its use of AI slop in game.”
Speaking of competition, Dring noted that Black Ops 7’s launch happened to take place during an incredibly competitive time for the shooter genre, thanks in large part to the popularity of games like ARC Raiders and Battlefield 6.
“ARC Raiders had a lesser impact than Battlefield 6 did, but if you’re just launching a brand-new shooter on the market and it’s getting a mixed reception,” he said. “You’ve got ARC Raiders as well as Battlefield 6 out, so it didn’t really come out in the best environment.”
“Now look, even if the franchise has fallen a little bit this year, it’s still mega numbers. We’re still mostly over 20m active monthly players – most games would kill for that. But it’s dipping below what it was before due to a mix of the competitive environment it released in and it perhaps didn’t connect with people in the same way it may have done in the past.”
Elliot puts it down to the “attention economy” in general being saturated with all of the different options that players have these days, especially when it comes to live-service games. He notes that, at this stage, the market is largely dominated by the bigger live-service games that have already been out thanks to general inertia as well as “improvements to their content.”
“This fierce competition, coupled with the difficulty of convincing gamers to abandon their established habits, cosmetic investments, and friendship groups – a powerful sunk-cost fallacy – is the primary reason for the high failure rate among new live-service shooters,” he says.
Further in the interview, Elliot also spoke about the potential for a game to come in that doesn’t purely focus on “hyper-competitive player-versus player” gameplay. Rather, he noted that newer entries like Helldivers 2 focused entirely on PvE and found success, while ARC Raiders managed to meld PvE and PvP in a package that also helped foster strong community interaction.
“So yes, Black Ops 7‘s specific issues contribute to its underperformance, but in general there’s a systemic challenge: the live-service shooter market is now ruthlessly consolidated,” explained Elliot. “Finding consistent success in this segment is difficult, even for a massive, established franchise. The path to success is no longer a guaranteed annual release, but rather requires exceptional product quality, genuine innovation, or finding a neglected sub-genre or new niche, where the inertia of the ‘incumbents’ does not yet hold absolute sway.”
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was released just last month on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The title has faced quite a bit of critique since then, and you can check out more details about why we think it’s a mess. Also check out our thoughts on its boss fights. As for how it might be doing in the market, its launch week sales were 63 percent lower than Battlefield 6 in Europe. Check out our coverage for more details. And while you’re at it, check out our review as well.
