We’re just days away from the launch of Battlefield 6. A lot is riding on the return of EA’s long-struggling multiplayer shooter. So naturally Activision is making Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 free for a whole week starting the day before Battlefield 6 drops. It’s the latest shot across the bow as the rivalry between the two blockbuster franchises gets heated.
Earlier this week, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7‘s free beta trial was extended an extra day to October 9. Activision is now making last year’s entry, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, completely free for an entire week starting that same day. Anyone can download it and play zombies, multiplayer, or the full campaign until October 16. That’s right smack in the middle of Battlefield 6‘s launch week, which begins October 10.
That’s not a cheap move for Activision to pull. Despite being nearly a year old, Black Ops 6 was still the fifth best-selling game in the U.S. in July, and remains the fourth best-selling game year-to-date. Is this an overreaction or a sign of just how desperate the publisher is to protect its annualized and rarely-contested golden goose? According to new data from Circana, a majority of people who plan to buy Battlefield 6 also plan to buy Black Ops 7, but only one-in-four people planning to buy Black Ops 7 are also planning to buy Battlefield 6.
The race for pre-orders
So far at least, EA has been happy to have a target on its back. The publisher released a Battlefield 6 ad earlier this season that directly played into the franchise rivalry and lampooned Activision’s celebrity-fueled marketing for Call of Duty. Battlefield 6‘s developers have also talked about how the game has benefitted from leaving last-gen consoles behind, whereas Black Ops 7 will still have a version running on hardware that came out over a decade ago.
“Maybe the only magic trick is that we’re not on the PS4 or Xbox One anymore,” EA’s Christian Buhl told PC Gamer this week. “So we’ve kind of raised the floor of what we have in terms of memory and CPU speed, and so obviously raising that floor helps with improving performance overall. Since we’re not trying to get the game to run on a PS4, for example.”
The head-to-head match-up also comes amid a sense that some fans are burnt out on the current arc of Call of Duty. Fed up with the flood of licensed skins, some players are pining for the days of more grounded military shooters. That’s one theory to explain the recent vibe shift, though who knows how that will hash out in the actual player numbers and sales.
Until then, fans have been left to squabble over which game’s trailers have more likes and dislikes and which game’s beta appears to be popping off more on PC and console. We’ll see if Activision makes anything else free this week.
