Black Ops 7‘s release has been marred by various controversies. Where last year’s release broke several records, the latest entry in the Black Ops series has failed to impress players, receiving criticism for its lackluster campaign, AI-generated art, and more.
In the aftermath, it seems the game is performing poorly across multiple platforms. Over on Steam, Black Ops 7 briefly became the top-selling paid title after its release, but it seems Arc Raiders has already pushed it down from that spot.
According to SteamDB’s global best-sellers list, Arc Raiders is currently the top paid game on the platform. Black Ops 7 is right next to the extraction shooter in second place, but this is not the usual trend expected of a new Call of Duty title during launch week.
As mentioned earlier, Black Ops 7 did briefly reach the top paid spot on Steam. However, the title was nowhere to be seen in the top 10 bestsellers list until right before its release. This alone was a major upset for the series since it typically dominates all platforms during the Fall period.
The Xbox best-sellers list reveals a similar story. Here, Arc Raiders and Battlefield 6 are present among the top 3 best-selling titles, while Black Ops 7 is found all the way down at the 13th spot.
This discrepancy on Xbox likely comes from Game Pass, but Arc Raiders is still dominating Call of Duty in this instance.
Ultimately, it seems Call of Duty’s traditional style of gameplay has grown stale. It also doesn’t help that fans have found little reason to tune in to Black Ops 7 when more interesting alternatives like Arc Raiders and Battlefield 6 launched on the market before Call of Duty’s latest iteration.
Although the situation seems bleak, the silver lining here is that Activision may be forced to up its game for next year’s Call of Duty if Black Ops 7 continues to underperform. Between the current disappointment and impending competition from GTA 6, next year’s entry, currently believed to be Modern Warfare 4, must shake up the formula in more than a few ways if it hopes to live up to the Call of Duty name.
