Call of Duty Promises Not to Do Back-to-Back Games Again

For a while, Call of Duty releases were guaranteed to sell well and were very likely to be the top-selling game of the year. This year, though, it doesn’t sound like Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is going to keep tradition alive, especially with the popularity of Battlefield 6, which set a sales record by moving over seven million units in its first three days. While companies, especially Activision, are very careful with how they word things, it’s evident from today’s message that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 isn’t hitting expectations.

In hopes of winning over some players, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Multiplayer and Zombies will be free to play next week, along with a double XP weekend. The team reiterated that it is committed to “unprecedented seasonal support,” with Season 01 being the largest live season ever. For what it’s worth, the team claims it won’t rest until Black Ops 7 earns its place as one of the best Black Ops games ever made.

The most interesting announcement in today’s blog post, however, is that we’ll no longer see back-to-back releases of Modern Warfare or Black Ops games. It wasn’t until recent years that we saw this trend, with Modern Warfare II and Modern Warfare III arriving in back-to-back years from 2022 to 2023, and Black Ops 6 and Black Ops 7 coming in 2024 to 2025. It doesn’t sound like Activision is going to abandon the annual Call of Duty model, though it did say it will drive innovation that is meaningful, not incremental.

At the time of writing, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has a Mostly Negative rating on Steam with over 1,400 user reviews.