Black Ops 6 breaks Call of Duty series records with mega opening weekend

Black Ops 6 enjoyed the biggest launch weekend in Call of Duty history and broke a big Game Pass record for Microsoft in the process.

It was only a matter of time before Activision and Microsoft began letting off some fireworks celebrating yet another colossal Call of Duty launch. Most new CoDs are often lavished with a selection of very positive and carefully-curated engagement and sales stats that always manage to show that the series is on the up. Well, now it’s Black Ops 6’s turn, and to be honest, it sounds like there’s not too much need to dress things up this time around – not only has it trounced last year’s Modern Warfare 3 when it comes to sales, but it has also enjoyed the biggest launch weekend of any Call of Duty game ever.

Through a combination of remarks made by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during an earnings call and posts from the official Call of Duty X account, some truly impressive records have been shared. While they of course don’t include exact numbers (they never do) they do confirm that Black Ops 6’s opening three days achieved the highest number of total players, hours played, and total matches in the series’ history.

With a four-year development cycle, Black Ops 6 has not only delivered some fun multiplayer action at launch, but its campaign and Zombies offerings are more than just the half-baked afterthoughts they have been in recent entries. The FPS game has also enjoyed an obscene amount of mainstream marketing (even by CoD’s standards) and of course it launched on Game Pass on day one, meaning that millions of gamers subscribed to the service could jump in at no extra cost.

Nadella also confirms that the allure of Black Ops 6 generated the “most Game Pass subscriber adds ever seen on a launch day.” While Microsoft is going to take a hit when it comes to premium sales on the Xbox ecosystem, if the Game Pass hook can sink and keep people paying for it each month, that’ll more than make up for it in the long term. I really hope Microsoft gives us some updated subscriber figures before the year’s out, just to see how big an impact Black Ops 6 had.

Elsewhere on PC and PlayStation platforms, sales have been 60% up on what Modern Warfare 3 achieved during the same period. While it’s unsurprising to see Black Ops 6 trump the critically-panned and rushed MW3, an increase of 60% is enormous when we’re talking about the millions of sales a typical CoD game will achieve.

If you’re already deep into the fast-paced multiplayer action, riotous Zombies maps, or the excellent campaign, we’ve got plenty of guides to help you out, such as this one on the best Black Ops 6 loadouts and this on the Black Ops 6 Prestige system.

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