Call of Duty: Black Ops 7's beta came and went over the weekend, or so we thought. After two days of closed access and another two days open to the public, Activision has decided to extend the beta another three days and add one more 6v6 map, Toshin.
The double XP party is now on until the Blops 7 beta finally concludes on October 9, which just happens to be 24 hours before the global launch of Battlefield 6. Is it a coincidence that the two games keep intersecting like this? I mean yeah, probably—it's a packed fall calendar and you gotta hold your betas sometime—but the short turnaround continues to make these dueling military FPS giants interesting to compare.
Take the betas themselves: Battlefield 6 surprised everyone when its open beta peaked at over 500,000 players on Steam alone, marking the "biggest Battlefield beta ever" for EA. Activision seems happy with the response to the Black Ops 7 beta so far, but Call of Duty's Steam concurrents didn't crest 100,000 as the beta opened up to everybody on Sunday. Steam is only part of the PC playerbase picture—a lot of Call of Duty players migrated to the Xbox app with Black Ops 6, where numbers are hidden—but the difference is stark enough to suggest there's more pre-release interest around Battlefield 6.
And how couldn't there be? Battlefield 6 represents DICE and collaborators trying to claw back the series' best days after four years of Battlefield 2042.
Black Ops 7's beta, meanwhile, is what you expect from a series that shows up every year with a fresh $70 price tag: Team Deathmatch, a perk reshuffle, and a new movement gimmick that may or may not stick. As someone who burnt out quickly on Black Ops 6, it comes off more like a glitzy expansion than a meaningful update.
But in a year where Activision detects real competition, the mega publisher is loosening its grip on its norms. Treyarch is ditching plans for lucrative brand skins (hasta la vista, American Dad) and following Battlefield 6's lead to stay grounded with cosmetics going forward. Then over the weekend, Treyarch made another shocking move by testing playlists with "drastically reduced" skill-based matchmaking, finally ceding ground on one of the most divisive issues in the CoD community.
No matter which side of the aisle you sit on, we're all benefiting from the competition.
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