In further proof that we are living in a simulation, the Call of Duty series 2024 entry, Black Ops 6, is the biggest yet in the franchise's 21-year history. That's in terms of both sales and player engagement, with publisher Activision proudly crowing BO6 ranks #1 in terms of launch window hours and matches played.
Launching on 25th October, it's now been a full month, and it seems the community is absolutely loving this latest from lead studios Treyarch and Raven Software. There have been a couple of snafus, sure, but at least anecdotally, there are always a couple of friends playing these days, and it seems this is a fairly widespread occurrence these days
Are you surprised to see Call of Duty remain on the bleeding edge even after some two decades of releases? How much time have you put into Black Ops 6? Let us know in the safe space that is the comments section below.
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Comments 47
Ah yes... the nebulous "engagement" metric.
They should've stopped at sales.
Go gamepass I'm guessing
#1 Cheapest at launch (1 USD)
The same thing is said about every new call of duty..the next one will be even bigger and an even bigger install size.
Heard a lot of good things, a lot of people dumping the newest FIFA or other games they’ve bought to play this instead.
On one hand people claim games got too long and should go back to about 10h, and people claim that nobody wants GAAS. On the other hand success is measured by the "engagement" metric, which favours long games and GAAS.
I guess the media just trains us to like games not because they are good but because they manage to create some kind of addiction and keep us "engaged".
Finished the campaign on xCloud a few weeks ago. Thought it was great. That said, I only play CoD games for the single player campaigns, which have long surpassed those of the Battlefield franchise (sadly).
@gaston id think something has to be good to be addicted to it though
So if I gave something away for free I could get the biggest engagement.
But I have sold nothing and made no money.
Sales is always the best level metric.
@OldGamer999 I didn't know that paying 19,99$ per month is free...
Engagement this means spending or playing.
@gaston Investors don't really care how they make money as long as they do. That gaming is such a big is not necessarily a good thing. They can't monetize more at this point and profit always needs to be higher and higher what's next a add after every killcam or advert before a killstreak.
@gaston yes, you are correct. Buzz has become very important. The lifestyle. It generates a continuous trickle of $$$ to investors.
Then again, that’s with every medium. They just want to be inside your head all the time. I think there are also some rules on (game) news websites for instance that one should not post many articles within a few minutes, but spread it out over the whole day to make sure people come back.
I am one of those persons, checking PS and NL multiple times a day…
Definitely not for me, but it seems like fans are happy so that's cool.
@nomither6 Doesn’t apply to gambling I think. You just have to trigger addiction mechanisms and the dopamine rush.
Can someone please explain to me the meaning of “In further proof that we are living in a simulation”?
@KyushuTrail It's probably the fact that core gaming community on this website (and many more) just talks about how bad COD is and how nobody is playing it.
Meanwhile COD games are best sellers every year.
That all seems very impressive at first glance, but I am always wary of statistics and how they can easily be manipulated.
Haven’t they changed it so that all CODs since MW2 are under one unified launcher? And wouldn’t that artificially inflates their statistics so that the latest one always was likely so come out on top? Not trying to hate, but I am suspicious of stats, a sceptic, methodology is important.
So is quick-scoping still a thing in this one?
@themightyant Yes, BO6 is part of COD HQ, but it's dumb to think that Activision can't track number of players/playtime/number of matches in separate clients inside HQ. Since they can track...anything.
What we know
Is it really that hard to think that BO6 really achieved records in number of players, played hours and number of matches based on this evidence?
The first one is what is Microsoft officially said at launch, second one is a quote from an executive when a podcast revealed MS were disappointed in the game and it didn’t make enough money.
They would close the studio almost immediately afterward.
MS are like the Anti-SquareSoft. They’re absolutely thrilled with everything. Everything is a massive success, couldn’t be happier. All the metrics are through the roof, we’re proud of the studio.
@Godot25 @KyushuTrail "We all live in a simulation" is a famous theory that states we are almost definitely living in a Matrix-like simulation. I have absolutely no idea why he's using it in the context of CoD selling well.
https://academic.oup.com/pq/article-abstract/53/211/243/1610975
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4wMhXxZ1zNM
@ChrisDeku BO6 is already third best selling game in 2024 in US, despite being on the market for 6 days (since chart was created at the end of october)
I'm sure that's comparable to Hi-Fi Rush
@Godot25 MW3 was a joke entry though.
@Godot25 And still I will play Hi-fi Rush and won't BO3.
@Godot25 Every Call of Duty sells like that in the USA, it’s nothing new. It’s meaningless in any wider discussion of the game.
@Godot25 Btw MW3 was the second best selling game in the USA for the year in 2023 in it’s first month on sale, and that’s the worst performing CoD in like a decade.
@Matroska @Godot25 Thanks! Yeah I know about the theory, but don’t get how this phrase relates to this news. I guess it’s not important
@ChrisDeku "and that’s the worst performing CoD in like a decade."
You have a source for that info? Because last time I checked, MW3 performed worse than MW2 (obviously, since that game broke all records), but it still sold better than Vanguard, for example. And Vanguard came out 2021 if I remember correctly.
Also, MW3 was developed in 18 months, so despite worse sales, ROI must have been pretty good for ABK. But that's besides the point.
"It’s meaningless in any wider discussion of the game." Bro, main audience for COD is US. It imperative for COD games to perform good in US, because that's literally the key to success.
@Flaming_Kaiser Well. It was second still best selling game in 2023 after Hogwarts Legacy and it's 5th best selling game in 2024. In US of course.
Not bad for "a joke"
Engagement numbers has been a standard of XBOX ever since they started lagging behind Playstation.
@nomither6 ah yes, gambling, nicotine, alcohol, any kind of drug... they're all absolutely good for your body and mind.
Addiction itself is not healthy, and is usually geared towards unhealthy things.
@Godot25 Sub services grew 16% is a nice way to say it but what was actually said was subscription spending grew 16% YoY for October.
I wonder how many lapsed gamepass subscribers just needed to sign back up for a month at the new increased gamepass price to account for most of gamepass's share of that 16% increased subscription spending.
@Nem time is money
@OldGamer999 not really considering some microtransactions make more then some games these days. Some cosmetic item in wow made more money then all of starcraft 2 sales. just look at fortnite and warzones profits both have zero in game sales
@ChrisDeku hmmmmmm "In November 2013, IGN confirmed that Modern Warfare 3 sold 26.5 million copies, becoming the highest-selling game in the Call of Duty series."
@Godot25 Not trying to say the game isn't successful, it is, wildly so. But it makes comparing it to most other individual games pretty USELESS when they seem to be combining all their COD games into one to boost their stats. To be fair it's exactly what their competition is doing. Fortnite now contains multiple games, it is a game launcher, Roblox by definition is thousands of games. THESE are their competitors and they wanted to regain the top step, that is to me why they are fudging the numbers somewhat. Everyone else is playing by a different set of rules.
No getting around it - BO6 is a really solid entry in the series. I’m not wild about some of the story beats or mechanics in the campaign, but it’s still relatively solid. The MP, however, is absolutely EXCELLENT and the zombies component is well designed and fun to play as well. Quite happy with this year’s COD offering.
Played 75 hours and sold it. Its good but not great. Played the other Blops for 300 hours each.
@clvr ah yes, i said “good” , not “healthy”. they aren’t mutually exclusive .
Because the people playing it aren't old enough to know what a good game is, i bet the first game most of these new gamers played is Fortnite, this call of duty is the worst ever made and i have played from the very first with doom health pickups, only call of duty games i never played were the psp/wii games, WW2, MW2 and 3 remakes and vanguard.
Lies, damn lies & statistics
@Toot1st You understand there’s two MW3s right? One of them literally just released last year, maybe you missed it. It was a bit rubbish.
I haven't seriously played a COD like this in a over a decade but I love this one. It feels like 2009 again. All 3 modes knocked it out of the park this time. Campaign is great, multiplayer is phenomenal, zombies is fun.
I am shocked that every time I think about what my game of the year will be this game is the first to mind.
It’s embarrassing how much these games sell.
@nomither6 I guess this is true to some extend. Though, I dare to speculate that live service games are optimised to make You come back, make You spend money on micro transactions, rather than providing good, innovative new content, ideas, game mechanics, interesting stories, messages etc. . Like industrial food is in most cases not actually good, but tricks You into buying it again and again, because of sugar, salt and glutamate.
@Godot25 It still was a terrible game the campaign was the biggest joke ever.
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