As EA gears up for the beta for Battlefield 6 this weekend, Activision has seemingly not been concerned about the upcoming multiplayer shooter overshadowing its Call of Duty game. According to Insider Gaming, anonymous sources from the company have revealed that, while Activision is keeping an eye on Battlefield 6, the company isn’t currently worried about it affecting the sales of Call of Duty.
The sources have indicated that the prevailing sentiment at Activision is that the Call of Duty franchise is “too big to fail”, so the release of Battlefield 6 isn’t expected to make any meaningful negative impact on the next game in the Call of Duty franchise, which is slated to be Black Ops 7. The game, set to be released later in the year, has been described by the sources as “strong” in terms of quality.
While the Battlefield and Call of Duty franchises have traditionally been seen by many as competitors, even at the former series peak with games like Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1, no negative impact on Call of Duty games of the time were seen. Rather, both franchises have instead managed to hang on to their own dedicated fan bases with some overlap between them.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was officially announced back in June. At the time, Activision had confirmed that the upcoming shooter will take place in the year 2035, and David Mason will be returning as the protagonist after the events of Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 6. The game was announced with a trailer. More details about the game are slated to be revealed during Gamescom Opening Night Live later this month.
In the meantime, Battlefield 6 will be kicking off the first of its betas today. The early access beta, access to which is available through invite codes that can be gotten by watching affiliated livestreamers that will be playing the beta. On August 9 to 10 will have the beta be completely open and available for everyone to check out. This will later be followed by another beta on August 14, which will run until August 17. The game itself is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 10.
EA, along with developers DICE, Ripple Effect and Criterion have been quite transparent with details about Battlefield 6. Earlier this week, the developers had detailed all of the changes that the upcoming multiplayer shooter had gone through as it spent time in playtesting through Battlefield Labs. Along with core gameplay, and class balance, Battlefield 6 also saw changes made to its maps. These changes were made after the developers observed how players traversed through them, and are meant to help improve the movement and reduce the time between players fighting each other.
Battlefield 6 will also be getting a battle royale mode. The mode was teased through small trailer, and while not too many details have been revealed so far, the battle royale mode is going to go through playtesting in Battlefield Labs.