"Call of Duty: Black Ops 6" became the first game in the series to be launched on Game Pass last year.At the same time, the game has set record-breaking numbers across all platforms, making it a major success for both Xbox and Activision.

Unfortunately, the response to the sequel "Black Ops 7" was very poor: the pre-order volume of "Call of Duty: Black Ops 7" has dropped significantly compared with last year's "Black Ops 6".

According to Xbox Era, technology media The Verge reporter Tom Warren said that if the pre-order volume of "Call of Duty" does not drop significantly, Microsoft will not significantly increase the subscription price of Xbox Game Pass.

He pointed out that the main sales of "Call of Duty" last year still came from the PlayStation platform, but this year pre-orders on all platforms have generally declined.Tom Warren believes that the pre-order performance of "Black Ops 7" is too poor, which is likely to be related to the large price increase of Game Pass.

"They [Call of Duty pre-orders] are definitely down. I'm almost certain that Call of Duty pre-orders are down."

In a worst-case scenario, Black Ops 7 pre-orders could be down nearly 50% from last year.But even without that exaggeration, it's easy to understand why Call of Duty didn't perform well this year.

"Black Ops 7" is in the open beta of Steam BETA, and there are very few people online at the initial stage. Although like "Battlefield 6", you need to participate in events to obtain invitation codes, the online rate is obviously lower than that of "Battlefield 6" at the same time:

"Black Ops 7" gave up various brand linkages and cross-border cooperation in the past, trying to win back the love of old players.Activision is even launching a new mode in beta with little to no "skill matching mechanics," a change the community has been clamoring for since 2019.

In general, Xbox Game Pass seems to have weakened the market performance of "Call of Duty" to a certain extent, and the reputation of "Black Ops 7" is far inferior to the previous game "Black Ops 6".In addition, competition for Battlefield 6 is particularly fierce this year, which also makes the situation worse.

At the same time, "Battlefield 6" has topped the Steam global sales list