Unless you were living under a rock, or in a remote cabin this weekend, you probably know most of your friends (and likely yourself) have been playing the latest Call Of Duty, Black Ops 6. Now thanks to some data collectors we know a bit more about how the game is doing on its first go around with being day 1 on Xbox Game Pass.
It should be said off the bat that neither Activision nor Xbox have said anything official, so any "reports" you see out there from social media accounts talking sales or revenue are likely not accurate. However what we can look at to get at least an idea of how the game is doing comes from video game data trackers such as Circana as well as some Steam numbers.
Starting off with we can see on SteamDB that the Call Of Duty on Steam peaked this weekend just above 300k concurrent gamers. This is just the Call Of Duty launcher so some of that is likely non Black Ops 6 players, however the previous months peak before Black Ops 6 was 157k players, which means Black Ops 6 essentially doubled the peak player count.
For reference last years Modern Warfare 3 launch month, the Call Of Duty launcher peaked around 190k. In 2022 it saw its biggest peak when Modern Warfare 2 launched seeing 488k concurrent users at its peak. So it's likely fair to say Black Ops 6 is outperforming Modern Warefare 3 on Steam despite its inclusion on Game Pass.
Big Spikes On Xbox & PlayStation
Over on console we are starting to get some data as well. Circana, the main source of video game data in the US has given us a sneak peek of next weeks data via Mat Piscatella.
According to Circana "just shy of half of all US Xbox Series users engaged with Call Of Duty". That is nearly 2x the amount of the previous week. Also on the PlayStation 5 side of things nearly 1/3 of all users interacted with Call Of Duty, up nearly 30%.
Over in the UK, internet service provider EE has said that Black Ops 6 on PC and consoles has "driven the biggest ever amount of gaming traffic for a game launch" on their network. It should be noted this is in terms of pure data which would include downloading the game, and Black Ops 6 is a rather large game.
Specifically when it comes to Xbox, the company notes it saw a 144% increase in Xbox Live traffic compared to the week prior.
All said, this at least gives us a little peak behind the curtain at the success of the game. Whether it pushes the actual overall numbers of previous games, and whether it significantly boosts Game Pass subscribers we will have to wait and see what Xbox and Activision have to say on the matter. But at least for now, the early feedback seems positive.
As for our own coverage, you can expect to see plenty over the coming days including our reviews of all the modes. For now though you can check out our guide for cracking the safehouse safe and earning yourself some in game cash and a rare achievement/trophy.
