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It’s been officially confirmed: Borderlands 4 outsold Call of Duty this year.
Circana published their Top 10 Video Games report of November 2025. The list shows that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was the best-selling game of the month.
However, in the rankings for the Top 10 Games for the year 2025 as a whole, Borderlands 4 is decently ranked as the 4th best-selling game for the year to date.
Under this ranking, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is the 7th best-selling game for the year to date.
A Deep Dive On Borderlands
Borderlands 4 launched in September 12, 2025, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows. Gearbox planned to also launch it for the Nintendo Switch 2, but has now delayed that version indefinitely.
The game had severe performance issues across all platforms at launch. In the succeeding weeks, however, fans were left disappointed with Gearbox’s plans for its endgame. Player numbers have dipped, and Gearbox continues to work on winning those players back.
A Deep Dive On Call Of Duty
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 faced an unusual situation for the franchise for this year. It is the third release under Microsoft Gaming.
It’s also the second instance of Activision releasing a Black Ops or a Modern Warfare game releasing back-to-back. Fans have been complaining that the second game for each release appears to be DLC that was adapted to a full retail release.
What was unusual was that Activision was coming up against Battlefield 6, the first new game in the franchise in five years. Fans were eager to pit the two rival IPs once again.
But on top of that, there was a growing discourse on how fans were unhappy with the direction Activision has taken the Call of Duty franchise. For this reason, many fans were also pointing to Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders as a more satisfactory alternative.
Microsoft chose not to share sales figures for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. However, the Call of Duty team shared a message that they would end the practice of releasing Black Ops or Modern Warfare games back-to-back.
What Does This All Mean?
While Gearbox was not able to sustain the launch hype for Borderlands 4, they still did much better than Activision did. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 launched at a time when the market was particularly hostile to the franchise.
But even outside of this comparison, Borderlands 4 still did very well. As we reported last time, the online discourse around it created a misleading picture of how well it actually did.
It now remains for Gearbox to turn Borderlands 4’s endgame around, and properly line things up for a successful Nintendo Switch 2 launch.
