As Battlefield 6 surpasses Call Of Duty’s player numbers on Steam, a former Blizzard president claims it will ‘boot stomp’ Activision’s cash cow.
Following its launch last week, the open beta for Battlefield 6 has been a huge success – despite the presence of cheaters on the frontline.
Over the weekend, the beta hit an all-time player peak of 521,079 on Steam. This is higher than Call Of Duty’s all-time peak of 491,670 players, across both Black Ops 6 and Warzone.
While it remains to be seen if this popularity will continue when the game launches on October 10, a former executive at Microsoft and Blizzard has made some bold claims about how Battlefield 6 will fare against this year’s Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7.
In a post on X, Mike Ybarra, who served as president at Blizzard for three years until 2024, wrote: ‘Battlefield will boot stomp Call Of Duty this year. But the real win here is Call Of Duty won’t be lazy anymore, and we’ll all get better first person shooter games for it.’
When a user highlighted how Call Of Duty has consistently outsold Battlefield in the past, Ybarra replied: ‘Call Of Duty has gone downhill for years since then. It’s a mess. Cheating, heavy UI/install, rainbow colours. People are sick of it. Luckily Battlefield will force them to change it.’
For context, 2011’s Battlefield 3, one of the best-selling entries in the series, managed to shift 15 million copies. In comparison,2013’s Call Of Duty: Ghosts, an entry which failed to meet Activision’s expectations, sold 28 million copies worldwide.
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As such, it’s very unlikely Battlefield 6, even with all its positive momentum, will ‘boot stomp’ Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 in terms of sales. Activision’s shooter has been the dominant military shooter for too long to have its reign dethroned overnight, but if Battlefield 6 does continue to gain popularity, Activision will be forced to pay attention.
Ybarra went onto clarify his ‘boot stomp’ comments in a later post, where he stated that Battlefield 6 will not surpass Call Of Duty’s player numbers overall, because it’s available on Xbox Game Pass.
‘What I meant by boot stomp is it will review better and drive urgency from the Call Of Duty team like never before,’ he added. ‘Player counts you can’t use because Call Of Duty is free on Game Pass. Which makes it interesting to see if it will sell close to Call Of Duty – maybe so.’
With only a few exceptions, such as 2023’s Modern Warfare 3, Call Of Duty generally review well, and not significantly less than most Battlefield games.
‘But I’m not wrong, more competition will make Call Of Duty better and I’m all for Battlefield doing that. It shouldn’t take that – Call Of Duty is lazy… 130GB+ installs, slow UI, incredible cheating on and on… they need to fix it. The only way they will is through competition.’
The big question is whether Battlefield 6 will actually eat into Call Of Duty’s audience. While they are both shooters with similar DNA, Battlefield has always predominantly targeted PC players, while Call Of Duty has traditionally sold better on console.
For Battlefield 6 specifically, the biggest test will be whether it can stick the landing at launch – something the series has, historically, struggled with in the past, especially when it comes to being bug-free.
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