A couple of months ago, reports claimed that Activision leadership wasn’t particularly bothered about the hype surrounding Battlefield 6. Even in its off years, the Call of Duty franchise has seemed too big to fail. But now we’ve got some early sales figures for Battlefield 6, and it seems like everyone might have actually underestimated what DICE was truly capable of.
Circana’s gaming industry analyst Mat Piscatella recently shared a swath of sales figures for the month of October 2025, and Battlefield 6 is putting up some impressive numbers. The team-based shooter was the best-selling game of October for both physical and digital games. That, by itself, is impressive when you consider that October also saw high-profile releases like Ghost of Yotei, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, and The Outer Worlds 2. But Battlefield 6 isn’t just the best-selling game of October. It also, in short order, became the best-selling game of 2025 as a whole. In just a month!
As if that weren’t enough of a flex, Battlefield 6 is also breaking records when it comes to the franchise. It’s already the most successful Battlefield game ever in a franchise that’s been around for over 20 years. In that single month, Battlefield 6 managed to surpass the lifetime sales of Battlefield 1 — which was previously the most popular game in the storied series.
“Battlefield 6 produced the highest single month US physical & digital full game tracked dollar sales total in 3 years,” Piscatella wrote on Bluesky. “The last title to generate a larger full game tracked dollar sales total in a single month was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II in October 2022.”
As we progress through November, the big question is how the newly-released Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will fare. So far, the mood around the futuristic shooter has been muted. On Steam, Activision’s FPS has debuted with “mostly negative” reviews. Most of the complaints are about the game itself, and not its optimization on the platform. Call of Duty’s primary audience is arguably on consoles, but according to Metacritic, user reviews are pretty lousy across platforms as well. The highest user score for BO7 is on Xbox Series X, where it has barely eked out a 2 out of 10.
Critic reviews also aren’t particularly thrilled by Black Ops 7. All platform reviews place the newest Call of Duty in the high 60’s, with PC having the highest aggregate critic score to date: 69 out of 100. Meanwhile, the discussion around Black Ops 7 on social media has been abysmal. Clips of the game that go viral often either mock the campaign or the game as a whole. In particular, clips showing a boss battle with a giant enemy as well as a mission where the player has to team up with zombies have become a lightning rod of ridicule. The consensus seems to be that, as a series, Call of Duty has lost the plot. Even fan accounts dedicated to the Call of Duty franchise are piling on it.
On Steam, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7‘s player count has been disappointing. Its peak so far is only a third of what the previous entry reached, and nearly half of what Black Ops 6 achieved. Still, PC has historically been one of CoD’s weakest platforms. The competition on PC is also fiercer, as games like Arc Raiders garner enough momentum to break concurrent player records. But when even jokey games like Escape From Duckov are outdoing one of the most successful and influential video game franchises, it is no wonder that the vibes around Black Ops 7 have been rancid. Missteps like AI-generated art aren’t helping the matter, either.
The pressure has been constant and visible. In late August, for example, Treyarch associate creative director Miles Leslie was specifically asked by IGN how he felt about the claim that the Call of Duty franchise has become “lazy” after multiple generations of success. Leslie said that Treyarch didn’t worry about the apparent stigma.
“When we start, it’s not like ‘what are they going to think?’” Leslie said. “It’s like, we have a vision, we’re going to hit that vision, and there’s always going to be people that are going to try to knock you down and not have positive criticism, which we do look for. So, it’s like noise, right? You try to cut through that and stick to your vision and plan.”
It’s not all been hype and roses for Battlefield 6, however. On PC, user reviews have also been knocked down to mixed as players rail against the small map size, shift in focus toward battle royale, and questionable monetization schemes. By that same measure, however, aspects like more condensed map size may play a part in why Battlefield 6 has attained mainstream attention. The gunplay and pace of the game has repeatedly been compared to that of Call of Duty. Though the comparisons here are often negative, Battlefield 6 has remained in the public’s good graces. The developers seem to have an ear to the ground when it comes to the community, and are communicative about their plans for the large-scale shooter. A public promise to keep the game grounded in realism has also garnered good will. In late October, for instance, players discovered that Battlefield 6 might implement a gaudy neon blue skin and promptly rallied against it. The neon skin was pulled by DICE.
Despite these quibbles, Battlefield 6 remains the best choice for anyone looking for a quasi-realistic yet fun fast-paced shooter — which was arguably what Call of Duty did best up until this point. We won’t know if Call of Duty retains the crown until midway through December. You can’t count the series out just yet. Infamously, even as online commentators rally against the Activision franchise, every release still does well enough to be a continued presence on yearly bestseller lists. A Call of Duty that performs poorly could still, in theory, handily outdo most big-budget releases.
But the way things are progressing now, and after many years of attempts, Battlefield 6 might pose an actual threat to Call of Duty.
