Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Breaks Digital Sales Records

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 hasn’t even been out for a week, but Activision seems pretty pleased with the game’s performance thus far. The publisher sent a press release over to DualShockers, which includes several interesting sales facts for the newest entry in the dominant shooter franchise.

Right out of the gate, the game is performing better than Call of Duty: World War II did in several areas. There are more people playing online than last year, and day one digital sales also increased. In fact, Black Ops 4 had more digital sales in its first day than any game in Activision’s history. The game also broke day one sales records on the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live.

The game is also doing very well on PC. Black Ops 4 sold twice as many digital copies in its first 24 hours on the platform than World War II did last year, and set a franchise record. This is a little surprising, considering the series is no longer available on Steam. Activision has decided to utilize the Battle.net launcher, which is operated by sister company Blizzard Entertainment. It is assumed that the publisher made this move to avoid having to give a cut of its sales revenue to Valve for selling the game on Steam.

The gaming community seemed very interested in how Black Ops 4 would do, especially when it was announced that the game would not include a traditional campaign mode. Treyarch instead included Blackout, the studio’s take on battle royale, a genre which has become insanely popular thanks to Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. When Polygon asked why the campaign mode was left out this year, studio co-head Dan Bunting said that the goal was to “make a game that across the board can be playable with friends.”

While Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is selling well digitally, it’s hard to tell how its launch ranks in the franchise overall, as no physical sales numbers were provided by Activision.

Kyle Flory

Kyle is a lifelong gamer and writer who studied English at Cal State San Bernardino. He has been a PlayStation fan since the release of Sony's original console and puts most of his game time in on his PS5. He loves Metal Gear Solid, and is currently working on getting platinum trophies for every game in the series.