Black Ops 7 Suffers Worst Japan Launch In 20-Year Franchise History

Black Ops 7 has been off to a rough start after officially launching a couple of weeks ago. The game underperformed on launch day, seeing some of the lowest numbers of concurrent players on Steam in the franchise’s 20-year history. Sales data hasn’t been fully calculated yet; however, it also seems the game has severely underperformed in terms of sales. Now, it’s been confirmed that the game has had the worst launch in Japan ever. Here’s all that was reported.

Black Ops 7 Launch was Incredibly Disappointing

To say Black Ops 7’s launch was incredibly disappointing is an understatement. Especially since the game was severely outperformed by its rival in the FPS shooter market, Battlefield. On the other hand, the newest installment to the Battlefield series, Battlefield 6, had become the biggest launch for the series in its franchise history, overshadowing Black Ops 7’s launch. I’m not saying that’s the sole reason the game did so poorly; however, it was definitely a contributing factor.

Worst Japan Launch in 20-Year Franchise History

According to a post on @Zuby_Tech‘s X account, Black Ops 7’s first week retail launch sales totaled about 12,311 copies in Japan. That’s the lowest sales record of the franchise since Call of Duty 3, which registered 14,117 retail launch units. What we can conclude from this is that Black Ops 7 is not doing so well.

From the beginning, the game garnered little interest from players, especially during the game’s open beta sessions. The game also faced strong competition, not just from Battlefield 6, but also from the new third-person shooter, Arc Raiders, which is doing very well. It’s hard to say whether Black Ops 7 was a victim of circumstance or if players are really just uninterested in Call of Duty games; however, Activision has to do something to fix this slump they’ve been on.