Activision may be a bit too confident about the chances of Battlefield competing with Call of Duty, as the beta for Battlefield 6 begins.
Battlefield 6 has been making a lot of positive headlines recently, with thousands of people queuing up to play this week’s beta, days before it actually began. Naturally, none of this has gone unnoticed by Call Of Duty publisher Activision, who are now owned by Microsoft.
They’re never likely to comment on EA’s would-be rival in public but a leak suggests that while Activision is watching events with interest, they’re not worried.
In fact, apparently the phrase that’s going round the Activision boardroom is that Call Of Duty is ‘too big to fail’, which sounds like just the sort of overconfident bravado that often leads to disaster…
The quote comes from Insider Gaming, which claims that Activision believes this year’s Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 to be a ‘strong’ title, that doesn’t leave the franchise particularly weak against Battlefield 6.
Black Ops 7 has had a difficult development though, and it’s unusual to have two games from the same sub-series released in consecutive years, since Black Ops 6 was out last year.
Although little is known officially about Black Ops 7 at the moment, with a full reveal planned at Gamescom in two weeks’ time, it does have a similar near future setting, even if the Call Of Duty games have never aimed for realism in the same way as Battlefield.
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The fact is though, EA has been trying to position Battlefield as a rival to Call Of Duty for decades and it’s never really come close, with Call Of Duty, even in some of its leaner years, always outselling Battlefield by around 3:1 and often much more.
EA’s expectations for Battlefield 6 are reportedly quite unrealistic but they should be happy if the game can make any inroads against Call Of Duty. However, it will be very difficult to judge how well the two titles are doing in comparison to each other.
Neither publisher is likely to reveal sales figures and Call Of Duty’s availability on Game Pass will make even Steam user counts unreliable – although that, along with leaks, is likely to be the primary method.
What will also be interesting is how Call Of Duty: Warzone compares against Battlefield’s rumoured battle royale game. Although the game has been officially acknowledged by EA it’s not been revealed in any detail and it’s unclear if it will be out this year.
Battlefield 6 will launch on October 10, while Black Ops 7’s release date should be announced at Gamescom. If it’s anything other than the usual late October or early November, then that might be the first indication that Activision are changing their plans in light of the increased rivalry.
How to join the Battlefield 6 beta
There are three Battlefield open beta periods in August, and the first started on Thursday, August 7 at 9am BST. That’s only available if you have early access though and, unfortunately, if you don’t have a code for the beta now then there’s no obvious way to get one, unless someone happens to give you theirs or EA does a surprise drop via their X account.
That first beta period will segue straight into the second, which runs from Saturday, August 9 to this Sunday. For that you can still try and find a streamer on Twitch that is giving away codes, if you watch them for at least an hour, or hope that EA gives away more via X.
The third and find stage of the beta starts on August 14 and runs to August 17. That’s likely to be the easiest one to get access to at this point and there’ll be plenty of streamers on Twitch offering codes, as well as promotions from EA.
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