UK Sales Charts: Call of Duty Remains Steady on PS5, PS4 Despite Black Ops 6's Xbox Game Pass Inclusion

@get2sammyb One assumes that people aren't going to go out and buy another console just to save ~£60 for a year, while simultaneously paying about £135 per year (or whatever Game Pass costs annually now) to be able to do so. This logic really only stands up for the people who own an Xbox with Game Pass in the first place, but that's one for the sister site.

MS must be crying with all that PS cash coming in...

Being 'forced' to continue publishing COD on PS has really hurt them, not.

I guess thanks to the fact that PlayStation is smashing the sales numbers compared to Xbox, it’s inevitable that the sales numbers were going to be as high as usual. I ain’t a COD fan, but I know a lot of friends that are and they are ‘business as usual’ when it comes to where they are playing the game. I asked one of them if she would continue to play on PlayStation or would the Gamepass release entice her to move over to Xbox. She literally plays nothing else but COD. Never crossed her mind, so as long as the game is available on PlayStation consoles, it’s going to keep selling massive numbers each year.

I knew playstation players weren't going to switch consoles, it makes no sense in buying another console just to play a game in a subscription that will cost over £130 per year. This will probably only effect those who own both consoles to begin with.

Sony were paying for a marketing deal that they didn't need, so hopefully that money is now going to their own studios or other publishing deals like Stellar Blade and Rise of the Ronin.

It'll be fascinating if CoD really can't drive much gamepass adoption.

Although gamepass isn't necessarily a particularly good deal for your typical COD player. Many CoD players only play CoD (and maybe FIFA), and they'll play it year round until the new one.

If you do that, gamepass ultimate will cost you £20 more than just buying the game outright (although PS+ will wipe out the savings). And yeah you get a lot of extras on top, but what's the point of having access to a load of games if you'll never play them ()

() How I mostly feel about game subscription services anyway. Games take up time, I'd like to spend that playing the best games

@UltimateOtaku91 who said they would?

88% is pretty low.

No PC in that v Series X only (which makes up only half of the series console) and where most of those probably had GP.

It was always going to sell. Because that’s what yearly franchises do. And it actuall Seems like this years entry is worth playing over recent ones.

@Toot1st Those who were under the assumption Call of Duty going to gamepass would hurt Playstations sales, pretty sure Sony themselves raised that concern during the court proceedings as well.

You don't just compare sale at face value and derive impact of one of the potential sales influencers, discarding all other drivers in the process. The main thing being MWIII had a 56 Metacritic and BO6 has an 82... I've been doing software sales forecasting for the last 15 years... on average all other things being equal you will sell twice as much with 80 Meta vs 50... (I'm willing to argue COD might be less sensitive to reviews, but it is not completely immune). Suddenly the picture isn't so rosy anymore... I'm not saying things are good or bad for PS, just illustrating how shortsighted this shallow year on year analysis is.

It's a win win situation for both xbox and call of duty especially once Nintendo is included. They still enjoy strong sales on other platforms and gamepass receives a boost. More people are playing call of duty than ever before. That franchise everyone thought was fading might actually get bigger than ever.

Playstation seems unharmed so far as well so really just an overall positive for the game/industry.

@get2sammyb Last year was 70% and this year Xbox customers have the option of Game Pass. I never expected Playstation users to buy an Xbox and/or Sub to Game Pass to 'save' them $70 on buying the Base Game.

I expected there to be a 'drop' on Xbox/PC game sales as some of those CoD gamers would also own Game Pass. It still works out cheaper to buy if you expect to play all year so I doubt many hardcore CoD fans would suddenly subscribe.

The more interesting fact for me will come with sales of Battle Passes, CoD Points and Cosmetic Bundles with Season 1 coming. If you have 10-15m more playing on Game Pass, losing 3-5m sales on Xbox/PC isn't reducing the potential sales of those - its actually increasing. If you want to sell more Battle Passes for example, the only way is to get more people in...

You also have 'declining' Physical Sales year on year as more and more switch to Digital. On Xbox for example, the top 2 in sales of 'paid' Games this week in their store are BO6 and the BO6 'Vault Edition' upgrade for Game Pass. Steam/Battlenet users also have to 'buy' on PC - with Steam having higher numbers for its first weekend.

Sony Playstation users have no choice but to Buy - the only 'choice' is Physical or Digital. Its still a LOT cheaper than buying an Xbox or PC to play on Game Pass so I expected it to 'sell' on PS. With PS Hardware outnumbering Xbox hardware, it should sell more. That percentage should be higher this year as not every CoD gamer has to 'buy' on Xbox/PC this year as Playstation is the only platform that doesn't offer an alternative way to play - other than buying it.

The aspect that seems to be overlooked is that the 'more' they can get in to Call of Duty, the more Battle Passes they sell with 6 seasons over a year, the more Cosmetic Bundles and CoD points sold too.

They may lose 5-6m sales of the 'base' game for example, but could sell 10m more Battle Passes every season making 'more' money than ever before...

That’s great for people who want to play on gamepass. Also I think people are underestimating how many people on PC got it there.

The annual 'half of my friends list are playing CoD on PS5' is holding up. Even people who also own Xbox's are buying it on PS out of habit, it seems 😅 (I suppose because they already have PSPlus for Fifa)

It will be interesting to see game pass numbers, surely it will have to increase them substantially, but part of me thinks the people that play one or two games a year aren't the ones buying game pass subs anyway, so it will maybe be more people interested in the short term of the campaign or people that already have game pass trying the game or those that have a lapsed game pass sub that resub for this.

-50% on xbox year on year and just physical. I imagine most on console use gamepass so that could be much more damaging as well

@Ravix if you’re on a budget but still want to try the latest cod, the price is pretty palatable. A lot of old players came back.

@get2sammyb Sorry did not mean to offend you, just that these numbers are absolutely inconclusive as they stand ^_^

@UltimateOtaku91 I think it’s less the case they didn’t need it and probably more the fact that it’s done its job.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner your forgetting that it's not just series X only. It's also out physically for the xbox one (and the ps4)!
That's many consoles with a disk drive. So an 88% split seems pretty high to me.

The game is very fun, so I'm glad to see it doing phenomenal on every platform while growing even more thanks to GamePass.

It's no surprise though.
Ps5 is outselling all xbox consoles by a huge margin.

No ones going to bother with game pass if they have a ps5.

The question remains though, whether game pass gets a lot, I could imagine Al la carte Xbox sales are non existent and 99% just pay for gamepass. Which again losses them money,

The madden/fifa of fps games, somehow gets worse every year yet always sells.

Campaign is over too fast, lot of wasted levels like having you yet again play as a child or fight zombies.

Multiplayer is the worst it's ever been, I'm sure it's a wonderland if you're terrible or using a vpn to get into the terrible player lobbies.

The multiplayer characters suck too, it's just a bunch of zombies characters that talked to you on a radio in CW Zombies, ignoring adler and park being paywalled behind ugly skins the only three playable MP characters returning are woods, weaver and stone. People really wanna play as duke nukem knock-off caine, mt everest climber rossi or Alvarez who stole vanilla ice look?

Zombies is just there to sell gobblegum, removed the perk store machine, box is the most stingy it's ever been for example I constantly just get green/blue rarity pistols which are garbage meanwhile just yesterday i rolled three rai-k's and a max rarity nail gun in one cold war match all from the box.

Game feels unfinished, doesn't feel like a black ops game.

I would like to know the ratio between PS4 and PS5, considering that most "casual gamers" are still on PS4. It also should be noted that 91% of Xbox sales are digital, the highest ratio of all platforms (PS 75-80% and Switch 50%) and this chart only counts physical sales. This also explains why Nintendo tends to dominate all the physical charts. Of course, 100% on Windows sales are also digital, and that's the biggest market by far.

@Bionic-Spencer I'd imagine that for people like your friend who plays CoD and not much else an Xbox with GamePass would be an awful idea - another box for the same price as the one you already have, another subscription to play online, then another to keep access to the game.

Considering this entry in the series seems like it is much better than most previous entries, I was thinking about picking it up down the line on sale, but I don't think I can. Buying Call of Duty now just rewards Microsoft for consolidating the industry, and I cannot reconcile that with industry consolidation, more often than not, being bad for consumers.

@Banjo- A similar article on Eurogamer claims the PlayStation sales are 80% on PS5, 8% on PS4.

@MrPeanutbutterz Wow, really? Only 8% of Call of Duty sales on PS4? That is almost unbelievable. I wonder if their source is reliable.

@SheerDisappointment

You mean Step sister site

Nintendo life is the sister site 😜

@GeeForce Yeah, financially, keeping Call of Duty multiplatform was optimal, but it's on PC where it's breaking records. It's also number 1 on Game Pass (for console) and, interestingly, Modern Warfare III jumped back to number 2. In short, a resounding success on all platforms.

Wasn't the release of COD on Gamepass a litmus test on how MS could drive players away from Sony to them? With the expectation that players would jump ship. As that, clearly, hasn't happened then this is a bad news day for GP and its future. But it might also have a positive impact on the release schedule for other Xbox games on PS.

@cuttlefishjones That was a rumour. The official version has always been launching all first-party games on Game Pass. What they changed recently is that they eliminated a tier that had no online and replaced it with a new tier that has online, but not all first-party titles at launch. That said, the old tier was only removed for new subscribers, current subscribers can keep that old tier if they want.

No surprise it's still selling well but wonder if it been on gamepass has made more people sing up or if the people who just play cod mai ly are just buying it as usual. either way I can't complain has it's save me buying it this year😎

@get2sammyb bruhh.. what is this math?? lol Xbox will take 70% of all copies sold on playstation, there is no scenario where this is good for ps, the more they sell the more xbox will take, not to mention that Xbox also takes 70% from steam and 100% from microsoft store + xbox. which means Xbox takes almost all the profits. no scenario is ever good for sony lol low sales low profit, high sales still low profit.

reports has already revealed that there are more people on Xbox playing BO6 than ps, those sales are only physical and duh game pass is a digital service, the big shame is that more than 95% of ps5 owners do not buy sony's 3rd party games. they instead choose to buy multiplats, plus there are no sony 1st party or 3rd party exclusives on the top played games list, this supposed COD sales is in fact a huge L to sony, they're dreaming of a game like this, they're watching COD success hile they shut down a whole studio and its game that both cost $400 million, none of their own games are dominating the most played games charts. this is alarming, they're basically a 3rd party console. all consoles have 1st party games doing well except sony. if they don't figure it out they'll be out of business

@SheerDisappointment not sure what you mean here by this, but why are you saying "save $70 on one game", as if this is the only day one game on game pass, what is this logic?? there are nearly 60 new day one games on game pass, with games like Kunitsu-Gami, indiana jones, frospunk 2, the alters, hellblade 2, bo6, stalker 2, metal slug tactics.. and much much more, people would be saving at least $1000 or more on games in just one year. even if you don't wanna play many games, you'd still be saving tons of money on game pass.