Call of Duty is massive, but will we look at the Steam Player Count and claim otherwise?

Consoles – both Xbox and PlayStation – make up the lion’s share of Call of Duty players. The series is gargantuan on both Microsoft and Sony’s platforms, and it certainly looks at though Xbox and Activision are keen to repeat the success of last year’s Call of Duty launch – and make Call of Duty Black Ops 7 absolutely massive. Wanting things is all well and good, but it’s whatever success may or may not come, it’s likely to be overridden with a different narrative.

Now, forgive me here, I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent, but I have a point, I promise. There is a trend in this industry, and hell, humanity – to always turn positive things into negative, combative things. Like in the very video games we all love, there can only be one ‘winner’, and everyone else, naturally, must be a loser.

Take Valve’s recent hardware announcements for example. The news isn’t framed as – “look how cool this is for fans of Steam and the SteamDeck!” – it’s always seemingly twisted into adversarial themes along the lines of “The Steam Machine is going to crush Xbox“, and now “Xbox is now even more doomed” etc etc.

You know the drill.

The same happens with games. As we approach the launch of Call of Duty Black Ops 7, I got to thinking about the persistent trend of stories that focus on Steam Concurrent players, and while I chalk this up under ‘Games Media Industry practices I wish would die’, I get why they happen.

‘Steam Concurrent Player’ stories are easy-clicks – hell, when a game is successful, and players are happy, it’s a nice story to tell, right? Who doesn’t like to see success in this industry? And we’ve certainly written a few of our own.

Where I start to lose patience is when our industry starts using them as some sort of total barometer of success, even though we all know it’s but one subset of data, and the only reason its reported on with any regularity is because it’s data that is actually available – publicly.

Battlefield 6 (a game I think is awesome and great) is a ‘glorious return to form’, so therefore, Call of Duty must ‘lose’, and we as the collective video game media industry, must write about it.

When it comes to Call of Duty, I’m already prepared to see plenty of takes in the coming days that detail the recent success of Battlefield 6, and then compare it to whatever Steam numbers Call of Duty Black Ops 7 is about to pull.

Ever since this years annual Call of Duty release was revealed to be set in the near-future, the narrative has started to form. “Battlefield 6 is going to eat Call of Duty’s lunch!” “My preferred game is going to be better than your preferred game!”

(Side note: ARC Raiders is the best multiplayer game of the year in my book, thank you very much!)

Why Can’t We Tell The Whole Story?

As I said, it’s easy and understandable why Steam concurrent player numbers are treated as this huge barometer of success. They’re the only numbers that are readily available, on demand, and on a surface level, a great way to see a snapshot of how well a new release is doing.

However, when it comes to Call of Duty, the reality is that Steam is but a tiny fraction of the player base. Thankfully, we do have data that shows that, and we can at least dig into some detail here. Firstly, Call of Duty even being available on Steam is a fairly recent addition. For many years, Call of Duty PC releases were only available on Battle.net, and if you are a PC COD player, you’re likely going to stay there. Elsewhere, PC Game Pass and Microsoft’s PC Xbox Store also now form a huge part of the player base.

During a shareholders meeting, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella commented on the success of Call of Duty Black Ops 6 last year, saying “Last week’s launch of Black Ops 6 was the biggest Call of Duty release ever, setting a record for day one players, as well as Game Pass subscriber adds on launch day. Unit sales on PlayStation and Steam were also up over 60 percent year-over-year.” Activision released the below image on social media thanking players.

IGN noted that Black Ops 6 ‘outperformed’ Modern Warfare 2 and 3, though hadn’t of course, hadn’t beaten the concurrent player count for Warzone, the Call of Duty franchise’s free-to-play Battle Royale offering.

Are we going to make a fuss about Steam’s number for Black Ops 7?

And the truth is, no matter what articles come out in the coming days about Steam concurrent player numbers for Black Ops 7, it’s likely to be massive, and however many players enjoy the game on Steam just isn’t really that important.

Let’s look at Circana’s Mat Piscatella celebrating PlayStation 5’s 5th birthday earlier this week on Social Media platform Bluesky. He shared just how successful Sony’s console has been, but there was an interesting additional piece of information – the top selling games on PS5.

Was it God of War? Spider-man 2? No, it was Call of Duty Black Ops 6 – which is the number 1 selling game on the platform – ever – even though it only came out last year.

I don’t write this to defend or call out Call of Duty, or Activision, Microsoft, Battlefield or Steam, but to educate – or to try to – that the industry is far bigger and broader than what one small subset of data tells us. I also, perhaps naively wish that reporting on things – from video games to hardware, to sales records to studio closures, wasn’t so dependent on all of this being treated like a team sport.

Maybe I am being a bit naïve, but like I said, it’s a practice I’d like to see die off, or at least not be framed in such a way as to be misleading. Like, remember those ‘insert-single-player-title here’ game loses 97% of it’s players‘ six months after release articles? I despair, I really do.

Will Call of Duty Black Ops 7 be massive? You bet. If you see a story that focuses on just one small subset of players and tries to spin you a yarn, feel free to educate!

Do you agree with my ramblings? Let us know in the XboxEra Forums or make some noise in the lively XboxEra Community Discord Server. If you’re looking to be a bigger part of an amazing community, then either choice is a good one!

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