Call Of Duty is losing players faster than ever despite Xbox Game Pass

Metro

08-05-2025

Not only did Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6's launch on Xbox Game Pass do little to boost the service, but the series has less players than last year.
While Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard didn't result in Call Of Duty going Xbox-only, it was still a massive boon to the company; one that's cemented it as the world's largest video game publisher.
Aside from getting to reap the benefits of Call Of Duty's sales on PlayStation, Microsoft can now add the games to its Xbox Game Pass service. As such, last year's entry, Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6, became a day one Game Pass title, in a clear ploy to boost subscription numbers.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, this strategy doesn't seem to have worked, at least not to the degree the company must have hoped. Financial results from January showed Black Ops 6 generated only a 2% boost in Game Pass subscriptions, which coincided with Call Of Duty in general continuing to haemorrhage players.
This is according to data from analytics firm Ampere, provided to The Game Business, which states that the results of Black Ops 6's Game Pass launch were initially positive.
33.7 million people were playing Call Of Duty last November, in the wake of Black Ops 6's launch, which was 13 million more than the number of players from the year before.
This can partially be attributed to 2023's Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 being an unusually unpopular entry in the series, with the story campaign widely believed to be repurposed DLC, but Black Ops 6 also improved on the 31.4 million players of 2022's Modern Warfare 2.
Since then, Call Of Duty's overall player count has declined, with Ampere reporting 20.6 million players as of March 2025. By comparison, where were 20.8 million players in March 2024 and 22.4 million players in March 2023.
Basically, while Call Of Duty is still huge, players are slowly drifting away.
Even if some games would kill to have more than 20 million players, Microsoft and Activision probably aren't thrilled to see player numbers declining with each passing year. Especially when Black Ops 6 is one of the better games in the series and a sales success. More Trending
That said, these numbers are from before a significant April update for Call Of Duty: Warzone brought back the game's original Verdansk map, something that was much demanded by players and sparked a noticeable jump in player count.
Game Pass has also enjoyed some growth in the past few months, with spending having gone up by 11% in the first quarter of 2025 (January to March) compared to the same time in 2024.
However, it's unclear how much of this, if any, can be attributed to Call Of Duty's presence on the service. Considering Black Ops came out in November last year, it's more likely that Game Pass' bump was thanks to newer additions to the service, be they Microsoft published games like Avowed or third party titles like Atomfall.
It'll be interesting to see how this year's Call Of Duty fares, assuming it too is a day one Game Pass title. No official details have been shared yet, but rumours suggest it's yet another Black Ops game.
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