In a recent earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said “Last week’s launch of Black Ops 6 was the biggest Call of Duty release ever”.
On the earnings call, Nadella said the launch “set a record for day one players, as well as Game Pass subscriber adds on launch day. And unit sales on PlayStation and Steam were also up over 60% year-over-year”.
Black Ops 6 already saw success on Steam, and thanks to this earnings call we now know how well it did on other platforms.
Black Ops 6 is the first Call of Duty game to launch day one on Game Pass. This is possible due to Microsoft’s $69billion acquisition of developer and publisher Activision Blizzard King. Nadella references Microsoft’s strategy of trying to offer its games as widely as possible: “This speaks to our strategy of meeting gamers where they are by enabling them to play more games across the screens they spend their time on.” A cheap method of getting Game Pass was quietly removed just before the launch of Black Ops 6.
The strategy seems to be working, as the CEO also said “We set new records for monthly active users in the quarter, as more players than ever play our games across devices and on the Xbox platform. Game Pass also set a new Q1 record for total revenue and average revenue per subscriber.”
Despite the successes, Microsoft laid off 650 Xbox employees in September, not long after it had already cut 1,900 jobs and shut down several game studios. CEO Nadella also saw his pay increase by £30million, a 63 per cent rise from $48.5million to $79.1million a year.
In other news, Nintendo has announced its new music app that will let you listen to songs from Animal Crossing to Zelda.