Activision Admits Black Ops 7 Did Not Meet Expectations; Call of Duty Has Lost a Large Part of Its Audience

This article was first published on the Gamefa website — Gamefa: news, reviews, games, cinema, film and series — at the link Activision Admits Black Ops 7 Did Not Meet Expectations; Call of Duty Has Lost a Large Part of Its Audience. Activision has officially acknowledged that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 failed to meet the company's internal expectations and those of a large portion of the player community. Tyler Ball, Activision's senior marketing director, …

Activision has officially admitted that the game Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 failed to meet the internal expectations of the company and a large part of the player community.

Tyler Ball, Activision's chief marketing officer, explained in a new interview with The Game Business that gamers wanted a completely new experience after several years of repeated releases of Modern Warfare and Black Ops. At the same time as these statements, data from the analytical institute Ampere also indicates a significant drop in the number of monthly active players of Call of Duty in the last two years.

Tyler Ball was candid about Black Ops 7's poor performance:

This was not a title that our user community was looking for; They wanted something new.

He went on to explain that although this game had differences from its previous version in terms of time period, new features and gameplay mechanisms, the evolution that the audience was waiting for was much deeper and more fundamental than these external changes. Activision officials now emphasize that the critical feedback received recently has a direct and strategic impact on future plans for the Call of Duty franchise.

Business statistics also reflect the critical situation of Black Ops 7. According to the report of The Game Business, the amount of sales of this game during its release in the European market has experienced a 50% decrease compared to the previous year's version. In the US market as well, this title finished 2025 as the fifth best-selling game; This rank is the worst annual performance of a Call of Duty game in the US since the release of World at War in 2008. Ultimately, rival Battlefield 6 was crowned the best-selling shooter of 2025, ending Call of Duty's long reign in the genre.

Despite these disappointing statistics, describing Black Ops 7 as the biggest failure in the history of Call of Duty may not be accurate and fair; But the documentary data clearly proves that this game has registered one of the weakest and least popular performances of this series in the last two decades from a commercial point of view.

The decline of this franchise is not limited to Black Ops 7 sales. According to data from the Ampere Institute published by The Game Business, the number of monthly active players of the Call of Duty series in 2024 was usually in the safe range of 40 million; But at certain times from 2026, this figure has fallen to 20 million people with a sharp drop. Of course, the Ampere Institute cautioned that some of these data are not completely comprehensive; Because the statistics related to Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 from July 2025 onwards and Black Ops 6 data from July 2026 onwards are not included in this set of statistics. Hence, the presented figures should be analyzed with these statistical limitations in mind.

However, a completely unexpected turn of events over the summer proved that demand for the Call of Duty brand is still at an all-time high. In July, Activision launched the classic versions of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2 for the PlayStation 4 and 5 consoles. Developed by Iron Galaxy Studios, these ports were able to bring the memorable story, multiplayer and zombies aspects of these classic titles to modern Sony hardware without any extensive graphical remakes.

The stunning reception of these two nostalgic titles surprised even Activision's own executives. Tyler Ball called the relaunch a huge success, admitting that while the company expected the ports to perform well, they never anticipated such a large scale. The data of Ampere Institute also confirms that immediately after the release of the first and second parts of Black Ops on the PlayStation platform, the number of active Call of Duty players once again soared and approached the mark of 40 million people.

According to the company's chief marketing officer, Activision has learned very important management and design lessons from the impressive success of these two classic ports, and plans to implement these experiences not only in the development of Modern Warfare 4, but in all its future projects. From the strategic point of view of this company, one of the most important keys to success is the strong desire of the audience for a simpler social experience and to enjoy playing with friends; The same magic component that Activision now believes was the mainstay of the appeal of the older versions.