Rivalry is one of the cornerstones of the gaming industry. It just is. From the moment people realized that they could make video games, they wanted to not just do so, but do so better than others, so that THEY could get people’s money and not other companies. It’s a vicious cycle that has led to the console wars, the ending of certain companies, and the birth of certain gaming franchises that endure to this day. That brings us to the current “war” going on online with Battlefield 6 vs. Call of Duty Black Ops 7. Both games look incredible, but when you dive deeper into things, a “rift” might be opening up for an unexpected victor.
Specifically, when the Gamescom trailer for Black Ops 7 dropped, highlighting a future timeline fight, mental hallucination levels, and more, fans didn’t exactly respond positively to it. On YouTube, as Dexerto notes, the trailer has over 130,000 dislikes, with only a fraction of that number being positive likes, and that was just yesterday’s numbers!
Now, yes, the trailer has over 15 million views, but that “division” in the reception is important. That goes double for the fact that the likes, which were only about 30,000 when Dexerto made their post, were absolutely ratioed by a comment by someone who said, “This actually made me pre-order Battlefield 6.”
That comment got over 54K in likes, which says something rather interesting. It says that a lot of people aren’t “on board” with what the various teams behind COD are doing and that they hope EA’s game gives them more of what they want.
…but…as you all hopefully know by now, just because a group of people on the internet says one thing, doesn’t mean everyone else will follow. As Reddit accurately noted in a thread about this situation, even when Call of Duty had terrible titles, including its most reviled games that got blasted for their story and repetitive gameplay, they outsold Battlefield by a landslide.
In fact, over the last 15 years, this franchise has been the No. 1-selling title in most of the world outside of a few very specific cases where a big fanbase came together to outsell it. Now, that’s not to say that Battlefield 6 won’t sell well. Based on its recent beta test, it’ll likely do very well, especially if it gets great reviews from critics.
However, barring a total collapse of its rival, it’ll need a LOT more going for it to finally conquer its foe.
