Even in the face of fan complaints, the new Call Of Duty is exactly where you’d expect in the PS5 sales charts, but that doesn’t tell the full story.
After 2024’s Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 managed to earn some goodwill back from fans, after the disastrous Modern Warfare 3, the franchise completely scuppered all that with the launch of this year’s Black Ops 7.
If you look at online reactions, Black Ops 7 has received a verbal thrashing for its awful campaign and intrusive use of AI generated content.
Disgruntled fans have made their feelings clear by review bombing the game on both Steam and Metacritic and yet despite all the backlash, Black Ops 7 still managed to become the top selling PlayStation 5 game of November.
This is according to the PlayStation Blog, which shares monthly digital sales charts for both PlayStation 5 and 4 games across the US and Europe.
There are no sales figures, so there’s no telling how much of a gap there is between Black Ops 7 and everything else, but it took the top spot in the PlayStation 5 charts in both regions, outperforming its two main competitors: Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders.
If you’re curious, Arc Raiders came second in the US and third in Europe, while Battlefield 6 came fourth in both regions (Dispatch was third in the US and EA Sports FC 26 was second in Europe).
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
Black Ops 7 didn’t fare as well on PlayStation 4. In fact, while it came third in the US charts (losing to Red Dead Redemption 2 and Batman: Arkham Knight), it only came 14th in the Europe charts. But this can be chalked up to most fans owning a PlayStation 5 by now.
So, does this prove that Call Of Duty’s long-established popularity has been enough to make Black Ops 7 a sales success and all the complaints come only from a loud minority? Not necessarily.
Aside from the lack of sales figures, these charts only cover the PlayStation platform. It was previously reported that the game’s overall physical sales were far worse than Black Ops 6 and the current best-selling game of the year in the US is not Call Of Duty but Battlefield 6.
Plus, analysts are insistent that Black Ops 7 is greatly underperforming when compared to previous games. Speaking with Eurogamer, The Game Business’ Chris Dring claimed that active daily players are lower than usual and ‘fewer people are playing Call Of Duty this year than they have been before.’
And while he didn’t have exact sales numbers either, Dring said Black Ops 7 is ultimately performing ‘below expectations.’
Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, concurred, blaming it on ‘a combination of community burnout, questionable creative and business decisions by Activision/Microsoft, and strong competition.’
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.