Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was mired in controversy when it launched, but that doesn’t seem to have had a huge impact on its sales performance.
Call of Duty is in a bit of a weird spot. The game exists in a generational pocket of flux in gaming, as the aging franchise seeks to appeal to both millennial, gen x, and gen-z cohorts, all of whom seem to have different ideas and desires about where Call of Duty (and gaming in general) should go.
December 2025 Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games – U.S. (Dollar Sales, Physical and Digital from digital data sharing publishers, excludes add-on content)
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Another factor here of course is Xbox Game Pass. Call of Duty has been available in Xbox Game Pass for a while now, and as more people become aware of the fact, it’s pretty obvious how that is going to impact Call of Duty’s sales.
Call of Duty engagement remains strong in most trackers, beating out Battlefield 6, which has seemingly struggled to maintain its momentum post-launch. Xbox Game Pass previously noted that Call of Duty had the strongest performance in the catalogue for 2025, although we don’t really get granular, transparent data on how games are performing in Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft doesn’t share Game Pass subscriber numbers, unlike other big subscription services like Netflix. Microsoft is shy about sharing numbers on these things, likely due to their instability.
Overall, the gaming industry saw 1.4% growth in the United States for 2025, which puts it behind other entertainment sectors. Alumni from Xbox, PlayStation, and other major publishers have noted competition from “doomscrolling” apps like TikTok and Instagram as eating into playtime hours. Despite massive price hikes to hardware, subscriptions, and games in some cases, the very modest growth reflects further headwinds for gaming as an industry into 2026 and beyond.
December 2025 U.S. Video Game Market Highlights Thread from Circana – Increases in consumer spending on subscription services, hardware and mobile content helped the US video game market reach $60.7 billion in 2025, achieving 1.4% growth when compared to a year ago.
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Microsoft is doubling down on things like Xbox Cloud Gaming, OEM-made Xbox console hardware, and Windows 11 to find growth in its own sector. Xbox remains an absolutely huge company, and separated out, would be somewhere in the top half of the Fortune 500 companies list. But existential threats have darkened the mood for its future prospects.
Xbox hardware was down 50% year over year through 2025, although Game Pass remains resilient despite its notorious mammoth 50% price hike for Ultimate. It remains to be seen if expiring users will renew their subscriptions at the new price point, but it does give Microsoft some time to reassert Game Pass’ overall value to existing and potential future customers. Microsoft has a January Developer_Direct show coming up, which will be comprised entirely of Xbox Game Pass content.
Xbox Cloud Gaming is also getting a free tier with ads very shortly, and I’m told that free-to-play games like Fortnite may get in-game ads as well in the coming months to boost revenues. But, I think really what gaming platform holders should be looking to consider is multi-tasking and social capabilities on their devices. PC and mobile gaming is growing more rapidly than console, and it’s almost certainly due to the capacity these devices have for multi-modal functionality. The next Xbox will be a Windows PC, at least partially, for this reason.
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