Call of Duty: Black Ops 7’s sales are way down compared to its predecessors, and now Activision has come out and commented on the situation.
While the game has still managed to top the charts in many countries, its performance has been described as “terrible” by some analysts, after it launched with 63% fewer sales than Battlefield 6 in Europe.
Now the publisher has admitted that the franchise “has not met your expectations fully” and vowed to “overdeliver” moving forward.
Seemingly in direct reference to the slumping sales, it said it believes Black Ops 7 is a “great game” but “it’s one thing for us to say it [and another for] you to try it and judge for yourselves”.
Subscribe to Push Square on YouTube166k
As a consequence, it’s announced a free weekend with double XP which will get underway next week, in the crucial period before Christmas. This will allow everyone to try the title’s competitive multiplayer and zombies co-op mode.
It added that it “won’t rest until Black Ops 7 earns its place as one of the best Black Ops games we’ve ever made” and therefore it’s committing to ongoing live service support for the title, regardless of its sub-par sales.
But moving forward, it will not deploy “back-to-back releases of Modern Warfare or Black Ops games”.
A statement said:
“The reasons are many, but the main one is to ensure we provide an absolutely unique experience each and every year. We will drive innovation that is meaningful, not incremental. While we aren’t sharing those plans today, we look forward to doing so when the time is right.”
The message concludes that “the future of Call of Duty is very strong and we believe our best days are ahead of us given the depth and talent of our development teams”.
It even goes on to tease that it’s been building the “next era of Call of Duty” and that it will “push the franchise and genre forward”.
These are big statements, and the kind of things a company would only say if its latest product had failed to meet expectations.
There was speculation prior to release that Activision believed Call of Duty was “too big to fail”. Well, judging by these comments we’re not sure that’s the case.
Good luck going up against GTA 6 next year.