In the UK, they already have physical sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6: has the game's release on Game Pass affected it?

One of the good things about the gaming sector in the United Kingdom is that, for decades, the physical sales of video games have been published. This makes it easy to see how well releases are performing when there is no official data from the companies.

And since the United Kingdom is one of the most powerful markets in terms of sales, it is usually a good indicator to know how well a specific game is selling. By the way, in Japan they also publish this data (there they even publish the number of consoles sold each week).

The game that was released last Friday and has everyone interested is Black Ops 6, the new Call of Duty from Activision, which for the first time is launching on the Xbox Game Pass service. Has its arrival on Xbox’s subscription service affected the game’s sales? Here’s what we know.

Ok, UK physical sales are in for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (GfK). Launch sales are 10% lower compared with Modern Warfare 3. This is almost entirely due to a drop in sales on Xbox, which was inevitable with Game Pass. PS5 sales remain steady year-on-year. Digital data to come

— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) October 29, 2024

Very good sales, despite the obvious drop due to Game Pass

As noted on Twitter by Chris Dring, editor of Games Industry, the physical sales of Black Ops 6 during the launch weekend are 10% lower than those of Modern Warfare 3 last year.

Dring points out that the drop in sales is “almost entirely due to a decline in Xbox sales,” suggesting that this “was inevitable with Game Pass.” Clearly, Xbox players who already enjoy Game Pass were not going to buy Black Ops 6 when it was included in the service.

Black Ops 6 was the first Call of Duty game available on Xbox Game Pass on the same day of its release, following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 peaks at 306,000+ concurrent players on Steam for its launch weekend.

This is the highest playercount in about 2 years since the initial relaunch on Steam in 2022.

BO6 is having a bigger launch than MW3 while also being available on Xbox Game Pass. pic.twitter.com/e7nMStdh7v

— KAMI (@Okami13_) October 27, 2024

Dring also points out that “sales on PlayStation 5 remain stable year after year,” suggesting that, at least in terms of physical sales in the UK, the fact that Call of Duty is now an Xbox brand has had no apparent influence on its popularity on PS5.

The digital data is yet to come, which will shed more light on the situation and reveal to what extent Xbox Game Pass has affected sales of the Xbox Series X/S version. The world holds its breath as it seems the game is performing very well.