Black Ops 7’s Launch Could Be Cause For Concern

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 publisher Activision has issued a positive response to the game’s release, but a look back at previous statements from past entries reveals that not everything about the launch may be as positive as it seems. While Call of Duty often dominates sales charts and breaks records year on year, fans believe the launch of Black Ops 7 hasn’t been as big as Activision would have liked, and the publisher’s recent statement seems to solidify that sentiment to a certain degree.

Activision hasn’t shared official sales figures or player counts for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, though the surge of major releases in recent weeks has likely created a tougher-than-usual launch window for the series. After a four-year hiatus, EA published a new entry in the Battlefield franchise on October 10, receiving rave reviews and soaring to the top of Steam’s most played games. Embark Studios, the developer of The Finals, then released its new extraction shooter just a couple of weeks later, which has also quickly become one of the biggest games of the year.

Related

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Zombies Has BO1 Vibes, But That’s Not a Good Thing

While the original Call of Duty: Black Ops’ Zombies mode is looked back fondly, it did have a big flaw that returns from the dead in BO7.

Activision Responds to Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Launch

Call of Duty is still likely to top the sales charts once again this year, but Activision’s response to Black Ops 7‘s launch paints a worrying picture. The publisher showered praise on the latest entry, saying it has seen a “great response” to the overall quality and depth of gameplay in Black Ops 7, before going on to discuss the upcoming Season 1 update. On the surface, this may seem like a standard, positive response. But when compared to past statements for its predecessors, it’s a night-and-day difference.

From 2022’s Modern Warfare 2 until last year’s Black Ops 6, Activision’s launch statements have included some sort of record-breaking achievement or player count figure, and Black Ops 7 appears to have broken that trend. Activision bragged that Modern Warfare 2 was the number one Call of Duty launch of all time, followed by Modern Warfare 3, which saw the highest amount of engagement in the trilogy. Black Ops 6 was even more successful, as the publisher’s launch response revealed that it was the “biggest Call of Duty ever,” with the largest number of players, hours played, and total matches in the first 30 days.

Again, there’s no denying that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will likely be one of the best-selling games of the year, but the difference between these statements suggests that it may not have been as successful as its predecessors. Many often believe that last year’s title, Black Ops 6, was always going to be a record-breaking launch as it was the first entry in the series to launch day one on Xbox Game Pass following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard. While Black Ops 7 has been given the same treatment, it appears that subscribers may not be as interested this time around.

If player count figures and sales are lower than past entries, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise, given how low Black Ops 7‘s user reviews have been. The title has a shockingly low user score of 1.6 on Metacritic, which makes it one of the lowest-rated video games of the year and the worst user-reviewed Call of Duty game of all time. With that being said, its critic score is much more positive, with an overall rating of 82 at the time of writing.

Released

November 14, 2025

ESRB

Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Drugs