Black Ops 6 Is the 'Biggest Call of Duty Ever', Player Engagement Through the Roof

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.

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

• BO6 was easily best selling game in October and it already shot to third place of best selling games in 2024 (despite it releasing on 25th) just behind EA Sports College Football and Helldivers 2 (in US)
• sales of BO6 were 23% higher than MW3 despite it's inclusion in Game Pass
• in Europe, sales of BO6 were 6% higher than MW3, but 28% lower than MW2. But of course there is Game Pass factor to consider
• BO6 created record in number of 24 hours signups to Game Pass in history of service
• sub services (primarily Game Pass) grew up 16% YoY in US thanks to Black Ops 6
• more than half of Xbox console users in US played Black Ops 6 during October. 38% of PS users in US played BO6 in October. According to Circana, no game usually crosses 30% mark.

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?

one of the most successful launches for Bethesda and Xbox in recent years

And now Xbox's vice president of games marketing Aaron Greenberg has denied Grubb's claims in even stronger terms on Twitter, calling Hi-Fi Rush a "break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations", adding, "We couldn't be happier…

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."

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.