Activision Executes Black Ops from yearly cycle
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Team DeathMatch
The battle of the Christmas Number 1 has often been Fifa or CoD with often a few suprises thrown in. But this year the charts look a little different on that battle ground. DICE came back with a return to form in thier Battlefield 6 hit, which I covered in detail over on IGN. And in the UK the impact was defeat for the long standing 1st Person MP shooter. Being below Battlefield 6 launch figures and 61% down on the 2024 entry in the series, according to Christopher Dringg from the thegamebusiness.com site. And this may have been the cause for the latest and suprise statement from Activision’s new owner, Microsoft today (9/9/25). In which they outlined their response to the fan feedback on the latest game being underwhelming and they plan to resolve this with a collection of changes. The reasons are likely sales related (fan feedback is often code for, “You did not buy our game as much as we expected”). With a lower than expected launch, the bad news continued into December with it managing to remain above Battlefield 6 each week by a couple of slots, but dropped from its No1 entry to 3rd after a week, and now 5th in its 3rd week on the market, with Battlefield remaining close at its heels. Something never change though, Fifa looks to be taking the crown once again.
| Last Week | This Week | Game | Platform Breakdown |
| 1 | 1 | EA Sports FC 26 | PS5 53% | Switch 20% | PS4 10% | Xbox 9% | Switch 2 8% |
| 2 | 2 | Mario Kart World | |
| NEW | 3 | Metroid Prime 4: Beyond | Switch 2 83% | Switch 17% |
| 4 | 4 | Pokémon Legends: Z-A | Switch 61% | Switch 2 39% |
| 3 | 5 | Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 | |
| 9 | 6 | Just Dance 2026 Edition | |
| 5 | 7 | Battlefield 6 | |
| 6 | 8 | Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition | PC 67% | PS5 22% | Xbox 6% | Switch 2 5% |
| 11 | 9 | Minecraft | |
| 13 | 10 | Ghost of Yotei | |
| *Data courtesy of GFk – Week ending 9th December 2025 | |||
Franchise Fatality
The news has been coming for a while as the series has not really moved on much since the Vince Zampella and co days. Flipping back and forth between future and retro themed, Zombies, Single Player Campains come and go. With a growing, but incredibly slow, decline in hype, interest and sales. But the latest changes offered by Activision are clearly an attempt to salvage some sales in the run up to Christmas, and gain some goodwill from all men, be they CoD or Battelfield players. First is offering a Free to Play trial next weekend in Multiplayer and Zombies, along with double XB (Whoopty do!). But also they plan to release a long set of season updates to support the latest games, which is very standard. However, the last is a change that many, myself included, have asked for a long time. To stop the yearly updates of rinse and repeat releases, and instead move to a longer, more meaningful strategy. The remaining corporate waffle follows after that, stating boardroom bingo “Moving Forward together” and “When the time is right” aka “We don’t know yet” but the change is certainly one that is long overdue. It remains to be seen if this does enrich and improve the stilted nature of the franchise or will it repeat another long running series that followed this trend a fews years back in Assassins Creed? The answers are not yet known, but you can be sure the sales register was the biggest Call to Action the bosses at Activision heard above all else. Time will tell what happens with Call of Duty.
