Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was the best-selling game of October, despite releasing in the last week of the month and also being available on Game Pass, a new report revealed.
Game industry analyst Mat Piscatella posted the month’s top top best-sellers for last month, and BO6 took the title ahead of new releases like Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, Silent Hill 2, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and Super Mario Party Jamboree.
The full report paints an interesting picture for what BO6 moving to Game Pass as a result of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision last year means, but according to Piscatella, it’s still too early for the numbers to reveal too much.
“Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 to Game Pass did a few things in the US,” Piscatella said. “It resulted in a subscription spending boost, shifted share of full game sales to PlayStation, did not appear to result in massive cannibalization of sales, and did not appear to provide a significant boost to Xbox Series hardware.”
The Game Pass move had a huge impact on Microsoft’s main competitor, Piscatella said, because PlayStation platforms “accounted for 82 percent” of BO6 full game dollar sales in October.
“So, all the open questions regarding the impact of subscriptions are still pretty open [in my opinion], and whatever one believes currently, well, not sure this biggest of tests is changing anyone’s mind either way,” Piscatella said, before signing off with a little cliffhanger: “Yet.”
BO6’s sales numbers weren’t specifically given, but after releasing on Oct. 25 and only being available on the report for just one week, it’s already the third highest-selling game of 2024 altogether, and will likely take the top spot when the year’s finished.
Full game dollar sales for BO6 were up 23 percent from last year’s Modern Warfare 3 over its first two weeks, so it’s clear that the game has been a success for Xbox and Activision already, with plenty more sales still yet to come throughout the last few weeks of the year.
