Black Ops 6 Drives Monthly PS5 Sales Growth in the UK, 75% of Players Purchase on PlayStation

So it's a win-win right?

Edit: See below for the answer....

This was completely predictable. Good for PlayStation.

So, Sony made a huge legal fuss over nothing…

Good to know Microsofts Acquisitions haven't harmed Playstation in any way major.

Definition of a win win

@get2sammyb I'd say it's a W for Microsoft regardless. Microsoft gets the sales across platforms. It gets MTX money across platforms. And even if it isn't driving Game Pass subscriptions up (though I seem to remember someone at somewhere saying there was a boost to Game Pass thanks to COD), it will help maintain the high-tier Game Pass subscriptions - so there is money there.

Bottom line: Microsoft is doing fine with the money-making department. It's not a multi-trillion dollar company for nothing.

The problem with Microsoft is that Xbox became a "Board Room" brand - in that the soul of the platform was removed once Xbox became too big and the gaze of big-daddy corporate became fixed in its direction.

How top XB execs still have jobs is beyond me. A $70Bn acquisition with no real improvement to XB market share and no clear outlook to how they intend to increase it (not just talking about this title). Given Gamepass is stagnating, surely the strategy isn’t to rely on sales of Acti games outside gamepass to recoup the investment?

18% down hardware ain't bad considering last year had the Spider-Man 2 slim bundle release around this period.

@bighal Maybe the problem is your thinking that reason why Microsoft bought ABK was to increase Xbox console marketshare... Especially when they offered a contract to confirm COD releases on other platforms...

It's hilarious that people think that Microsoft cares about stagnating market where even Sony can't increase their position in.

If Microsoft cared about their console marketshare, they would never started porting their games on other systems.

@Savage_Joe such things doesnt change in next morning. Only time will tell how it will work out.

@bighal Isnt Playstation selling all Activision games? Why are you fixated so much on GamePass. Overall revenue is important, thats why you buy those companies.
Zero of real world ads for Black Ops 6 mentioned GamePass. It is telling something. But XB is no loser at any point. They got yearly cash cow on their hands, only need to continue to milk it "correctly", so people come back for more and more throigh GamePass or buying on PC/PS

@bighal ...MTXs on CoD alone will rake them in billions alone plus all the revenue from World Of Warcraft subs and MTXs. Not to mention all those PS5 edition sales. This is a long term investment. Surely you didn't expect them to recoup $76bn dollars in 3 months ??

@Oram77 Well its a Win for MS as they get all that revenue off of anothers Platform and a Win for Sony as they don't 'lose' those CoD gamers to Xbox and get 30% of revenue for 'hosting' that game.

I'm sure its a 'win' if the game is Profitable for Microsoft and/or even 'grows' their Monthly Active Users (MAU's) across all Platforms. 75% sales on PS5 doesn't necessarily mean that Sony have 3/4's of ALL CoD gamers choosing to play on Playstation Hardware though as some Xbox and PC gamers will be playing via Game Pass.

The game could have sold 10m for example so 7.5m copies were sold on PS with Xbox only selling 1.1m - however there could be 15m players as 5m play via Game Pass.

MW3 had 70% sales on PS5 in its first week or two - that was also without Game Pass access and with Sony having the Marketing too. Sony PS5 gamers were never likely to trade in their PS5 just to get CoD on a $20 a month subscription on Xbox hardware. They also probably outnumber Xbox hardware by at least 2:1 at this point.

Its not so much about 'lost' sales either and with Season 1 about to kick off, its more about how many extra Battle Passes can they sell. With 10m players, they can only sell up to 10m Season Passes, but get 20m in, even if half didn't buy, that's double the Season Passes they could sell, double the Bundles and/or CoD points too. 6 Seasons a year at $25 - as well as a year of Game Pass Subscription fees is likely 'better' for MS than selling the game for $70 on PS5 and those BP's when they only get 70% of that revenue from Sony - but 70% is still better than nothing when it will likely sell 'millions' on PS5 and 'not' losing that revenue for 'exclusivity' to try and 'force' gamers to change platform

To all those that missed my point. Usually when you acquire a company it’s not just to recoup the cost from its revenue stream (in business terms that usually takes too long because if it didn’t then it would be undervalued). It’s usually because there is a synergy with your strategy. Having been involved in several M&A that’s usually my experience but of course I can’t speak authoritatively about MS.

About someone’s Fan boy comment…increasing gamepass growth does not have to mean excluding other revenue streams (hence I never feared about PS for the short term at least).

Basically I’m saying companies usually have strategic objectives with such acquisitions and if it wasn’t increasing gamepass what was it?

@get2sammyb they already tweeted that 50% of all US Xbox users were playing COD. Plus this is the first COD since the 360 days that more are playing on Xbox than PlayStation. So it's a W.

@KingPev Obviously microtransactions come into it, but to recoup $76 billion it would take roughly 1.26 billion sales of CoD at $60 per game. To put that into perspective, the original Xbox lost Microsoft somewhere between $5 and $7 billion it was such a flop. They've now lost 11 to 15 times that amount until they make it back - and soon enough to matter. I know it's not just about CoD, but to even break even if it was just down to CoD (just as an example) they'd need to sell 50 million copies of CoD each year for the next 25 years. Well, more than that since a large cut goes to the platform holder. The best selling CoD of all time is apparently Black Ops with 30 million but that's total sales across numerous years, not just in one year.

As we both said, microtransactions are part of it too but we have no way of knowing how profitable they are each year. But we do know that the decision to buy Activision Blizzard was seen as so bad that the higher ranks of MS stepped in and made them release various exclusives on PS5.

So Xbox console sales still decreased even though they put Cod on gamepass.

Stick a fork in it Phil it's done and down 11% on MW3 which is one of the worst cod's that underperformed by cod standards lol. I guess the big question is how much it helped increase subs but Xbox will never give those numbers and I doubt it was massive if it couldn't even increase sales lmao.

@Matroska Microsoft said they went after ABK for King. To get a foothold in the mobile market. If they get the Xbox app store running & it's successful on IOS & Android. Then it's money well spent as mobile is the bigger prize.

I don’t play platforms. I play games. Some people here really wish for Xbox to die, which is really sad. Sony is already pulling some major BS this gen and they need someone to keep them in check. Just for clarity and to counter those gloomy forecasts for Xbox: I mostly game on PS5, but I also game on xCloud a lot and I’m currently enjoying the hell out of Black Ops 6 that way. I’m using the Amazon Fire Tv 4K stick for xCloud and it’s working great for me. Once Xbox lets me stream the games I own (already in the testing phase) I won’t need an Xbox, ever. I hope Sony makes the same possible for Playstation games at some point.

@get2sammyb “I'm still of the opinion Game Pass is simply not a viable business model without the enormous cheque book of Microsoft bankrolling it.”

Oh I agree. But I’ll certainly take advantage of the multi-trillion dollar company while I can!

I have GPU until at least July 2026.

I replaced my Series X with a PC, so if Microsoft wants to dismantle its console business, I won’t lose any sleep.

@gollumb82 "I don’t play platforms. I play games." I hope someday the community realize that's what really matters.

Microsoft could buy Take-Two Interactive and EA and both GTA VI and FC 26 would still sell way more on PlayStation. Sony will probably be feeling a bit silly now after making a fuss about the ABK acquisition as losing the CoD marketing rights and the fact it’s on Game Pass day one has made no difference to sales on PS.

MS would well point to this evidence if they ever plan to make more big acquisitions in the future.

So many people forget about the regular money spinner that is King in the ABK deal.

@Foxx_64740 ..yep I totally agree. I'm not interested in MS, Sony or Nintendo as platforms - I'm just into great games, of which there are lots of them on every platform. I have a PS5, XBX, Switch, PC and a Steam Deck. I couldn't imagine being without any of them.
Imagine never playing a Zelda or Mario game because you had loyalties to Sony

I can hear Phil Spencer laughing on his way to the bank....👍😁👍

@Major_Player Wouldn’t those PlayStation gamers have only paid Microsoft 70% of ”FULL price”, with the other 30% going to Sony? In any case, they’re probably people who prefer ownership in lieu of ever increasing rental fees.

Playing BO6 on gamepass since I already have it. If I had to buy it, I'd likely get it on Playstation

Not really business as usual. It should be mentioned that sources close to Windows Central are saying that most of the Black Ops 6 players are on GamePass. So yeah. Physical sales are obviously the most on PS4/PS5, but player count are higher on GamePass Xbox/PC.

Surely a win for Microsoft in that regard. They did this right, Stalker 2 and Indy are incoming, effectively keeping many new subscribers subscribing for more than an initial month. And as usual the CoD battle passes will bring in more cash.

@get2sammyb

“We don’t have meaningful stats but I’ll say this is an L because I hate the other toy maker”

This site has plummeted downhill quickly over the past few months.

@MaccaMUFC
There was no telling without regulators and all the scrutiny whether Microsoft would not have just kept all ABK games exclusive. Sonya and the FTC were right to push back on the acquisition. Even if Microsoft fully intended to keep everything multiplatform from the start, which they definitely would not have done if they were in a dominant gaming position, it's the right call to prevent a $3T company from just buying more and more power.

@Major_Player grow up. Couldn’t care less about COD being owned by MS or childish fan boy stuff.

@bighal eh? all those sales makes MS a ton of money

@KingPev nobody is buying a games console to play cod did you really think that?

@Toot1st ....errrrr, no I dont....where does it say I thought that ?? 🤔