The Call of Duty series is starting to lose its magical shackles — by the end of 2025, the new Black Ops 7 has crept only to seventh place in the final PlayStation Store download lists. This, by the way, happened for the first time in a good dozen years, because the franchise has consistently occupied the top of the Sony gaming chain since 2015. According to statistics, it can be understood that the situation is sad
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Reasons for the fall of Call of Duty and departure from the top 5 PS Store
In fact, the high—profile launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 turned into a real fiasco – the game instantly flew out of the list of sales leaders, and this, to be honest, was expected. Analysts, by the way, are trumpeting a total loss of interest in the franchise, especially against the background of Black Ops 7, which managed to collect all the jambs of its predecessor. Instead of dictating fashion, CoD is now, in fact, trailing behind, giving its audience to more agile competitors — a sad sight.
Black Ops 6 technical issues and Server errors
The plot in Black Ops 6 is, in truth, kind of surreal, because it is tightly tied to servers, which is why crashes happen even in single-player mode. In addition, PC owners were dealing with a whole bunch of problems: from black screens to sudden FPS drawdowns and this damned error 262146 — the oldies of the series clearly did not appreciate this attitude. Multiplayer, with its vaunted omni movement, has turned into chaos, where hit registration works every other time, and bullets, apparently, just fly through enemies, causing players only rage.
By the way, if you don’t want to repeat other people’s mistakes, check your hardware in advance. For the normal operation of the BO6, a fast SSD and at least 16 GB of RAM are vital, otherwise the freezes will simply devour you. It’s worth trying to clear the cache, by the way. Battle.net using the ipconfig /flushdns command in the console, this simple maneuver solves up to 70% of connection problems at the start.
Competition with Battlefield and falling Activision sales
In 2025, Battlefield 6 and the daring Arc Raiders rolled onto the scene, which, let’s put it this way, instantly pulled the blanket over themselves due to their sane destructibility and stable network code. Black Ops 6 looks like an outdated dinosaur against their background — the dynamics are boring, and the crooked integration with Warzone has finally finished off the multiplayer mode. It seems that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has an even darker future ahead: pre-orders have already collapsed, and real sales were 30-40% lower than what the bosses from Activision expected.
When choosing a new shooter, always look at SteamDB — if online falls below the 100k mark in the first week, then the project is likely to stall soon. It’s better to switch to BF6 if you value clear tactics and logical respawn points — unlike CoD, there is no such crazy randomness.
Player Reviews: Anger on Steam and Reddit
Things are not going well for Black Ops 7 in the Steam store — only 51% of positive reviews, while people are massively complaining about the ridiculous 3-4-hour campaign. On Reddit, by the way, fans don’t choose expressions at all: “Warzone is completely dead because of Area 99,” “The worst campaign in the history of the series.” Activision, of course, admitted the failure and promised to fix everything, but apparently the credibility has already been exhausted.
Real voices from the network: — “Crashes from a single-player game due to server problems are just bullying people!” (Steam). — “In a couple of years, these games will stop running without crutches at all” (Reddit).
Generally, make it a rule to read reviews a week before purchase. If the rating has dropped below 70%, then it is better, in short, to skip such a release and wait for a 50% discount — it will definitely arrive in a couple of months.
Low ratings in the PlayStation Store and degradation of the series
The situation on the PlayStation Store is no better — Black Ops 6 has only crept up to 3.9/5 stars, with players mostly blaming brazen microtransactions and a complete lack of fresh ideas. The franchise that was once the king of the FPS genre is literally going down today – Black Ops 7, with its infamous 1.9/5, sets anti—records at the start. Metacritic only confirms the diagnosis: profile critics are still trying to squeeze out 7/10, but ordinary users are merciless — only 4-5 points.
The series is deteriorating due to the conveyor type of production – the publisher picked up the worst chips from service games, but forgot about the basic stability. My advice: it’s better to go back to the good old CoD 4 or the original MW2 — those pirate servers are still alive and smelling, unlike the new “masterpieces”.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 loses ground
The Japanese brand Sony presented its annual report at the screening, and, frankly, a sensation is brewing there — Black Ops 7 failed to break into the top 5 most downloaded hits neither in the United States nor in Europe. In the North American region, the Activision project seems to have been crushed by sports giants like NBA 2K26 and Madden NFL 26, as well as the suddenly powerful Battlefield 6.
In fact, the situation for Kolda in Europe looks even sadder, because EA Sports FC 26 and the eternal classic GTA V rule the ball there, which, you need to agree, refuses to die at all. By the way, even Minecraft managed to beat the shooter in the final standings — it’s quite strange to see such layouts for a game that cheerfully topped the monthly PS5 charts back in November.
Rating of the most downloaded games on the PlayStation console
Analysts are scratching their heads — some blame the strong competition from Battlefield 6, others blame the banal fatigue of players from the annual assembly line. It is also worth considering the fact that last year’s Black Ops 6, by the way, took gold in 2024 without any problems, but the current release, apparently, did not live up to expectations.
Interestingly, there have been no official winning statements from the publisher regarding BO7 sales yet — the silence on the air only confirms that things are not going smoothly in the Danish kingdom. As a result, we have a historical precedent: a long-term leader seems to be slowly losing ground under the onslaught of sports simulators and good old sandboxes.
