It seems like Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 has been an unquestionable success for Activision. In their earnings report today, the publisher announced that Black Ops 4’s performance in its first three weeks on the market has been better than Black Ops 3’s performance was in 2015. Black Ops 3 is one of the highest selling games in a series with lots of high selling games, so Black Ops 4 is off to a great start for sure.
Even better for Activision is the performance of Black Ops 4 on PC—in spite of Black Ops 4 eschewing Steam, and choosing to launch via Blizzard’s Battle.net, it was in fact three times more popular than Black Ops 3 was (which did, in case you were wondering, launch on Steam). I have to imagine that every future game in the series will now come to Battle.net instead of Steam—especially since Activision doesn’t have to split the revenue with Valve anymore.
Doubtless, the battle royale mode Blackout has a lot to do with Black Ops 4’s success, and it remains to be seen if future games in the series can continue this pattern of growth. Then again, Call of Duty has been a fixture at the top of the sales charts for years now, and I don’t see any reason why that would have to change any time soon.