Many people rightly questioned the impact Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 coming to Game Pass would have on sales of the game on Xbox, and some have been quick to highlight shortfalls compared to previous games from the launch week.
GamesIndustry.biz recently reported that sales of the game in the UK were down 15% compared to Modern Warfare 3, and 46% compared to the more popular Modern Warfare 2. Most of this is, indeed, driven by Xbox (and by association, Game Pass), with Xbox sales down 67% against MW3. PC sales are down by 18% (also likely driven by Game Pass), while PS5 sales are up 30% (again, UK only).
However, Xbox has said sales across PlayStation and Steam are up globally by 60% year on year, which is a big number. I would expect this is helped primarily by the much better critical reception of Black Ops 6 versus Modern Warfare 3.
We also heard from Activision that the launch of Black Ops 6 was the biggest ever in the franchise’s history and the largest increase in day one players and new Game Pass subscribers. Another layer of detail then came from Matt Piscatella via Circana’s Player Engagement Tracker, stating that on October 28th, 52% of active XBS players and 34% of active PS5 players played Call of Duty.
But these figures don’t tell the whole story. A key element in Microsoft’s Call of Duty on Game Pass experiment is the ability for people to upgrade that version to the “Vault Edition”. This £30 / $30 upgrade gives players a whole host of extras for use in multiplayer (mainly an exclusive Battle Pass with 1100 Call of Duty Points and 20 Tier Skips).
It seems reasonable to assume these edition upgrades are not being included in digital retail sales tracking (otherwise it would double count people who bought the standard edition and then upgraded), so are being missed. This might not be a huge issue, if it wasn’t for the fact that the upgrade is number 1 in the paid Xbox chart in both the UK and the US). In the US, the main Black Ops 6 game is number 2, with Dragon Age new in at number 3 (giving an indication of just how well the Black Ops versions are selling) and the standalone Vault Edition at number 4.
So when taking into account the divergence in sales figures between PlayStation and Xbox, you do also have to bear in mind that a significant number of those Game Pass players appear to have invested in the Vault edition upgrade, giving Microsoft an awful lot of £30 transactions coming into their account over the past couple of weeks.