More than 50% of US Xbox Series gamers played Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 since launch

As you know, we have already reported on several occasions that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 had an outstanding premiere.

Even before it was released, UK broadband providers were reporting record traffic as a result of the game's launch, followed by Microsoft's revelation that the game had the best launch ever for the series almost by any metric (Game Pass subscriptions were up, sales were up and player numbers were up), SteamDB revealed that the game had over 300,000 concurrent players at launch (more than any previous game in the series) - and all of this has contributed to the Call of Duty series now becoming the second-biggest franchise in gaming history with over half a billion copies sold. Not too shabby.

But now Circana CEO and analyst Mat Piscatella, who has better data than anyone on US game sales, delivers confirmation that Black Ops 6 pulled off another downright astonishing feat. Via Bluesky, he reveals that more than one in two US Xbox Series S/X players were playing Black Ops 6 on October 28:

"According to Circana's Player Engagement Tracker, on Oct 23rd, 19% of US active Xbox Series players and 18% of US active PlayStation 5 players launched Call of Duty HQ.

On October 28th, 52% of active XBS players and 34% of active PS5 players did so. Both were all-time highs for Call of Duty HQ."

The Xbox figure is obviously a new record, and is helped by the fact that the game is included with Game Pass, but the fact is that the PlayStation 5 figure is also a record (previously it reached a peak of 27%). PlayStation appears not to be losing out on the fact that the game is included with Game Pass, but rather seems to benefit from it and increase, which may be a result of, among other things, increased attention from more people playing and that many want to play with their friends, as Black Ops 6 supports cross-play.

Still, this is crazy impressive from Xbox, or as Piscatella puts it: "Over HALF of all daily active players on a platform playing one game is bonkers engagement."