Game publisher Activision and developer Treyarch announced today that Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 has set a new launch day record as the biggest day one digital release in Activision history. You can probably credit the enormous positive reaction to the Blackout battle royale mode in this year’s game.
You’ll notice that it doesn’t say biggest day one sales ever, period. But that’s not a bad record, since digital accounts for so much of sales these days for major video games. And, as is its usual practice, Activision did not disclose actual sales. I predicted this kind of result last week, because I had so much fun playing Blackout, which copies the survival games PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite, where 100 players compete on one map down to the lone survivor or surviving team.
Previoulsy, the digital sales record for the first day of release was held by last year’s game, Call of Duty: WWII.
Released Friday, Black Ops 4 also set a new PlayStation record for day one digital full game sales on the PlayStation Store, globally. The title also became the best-selling Activision Xbox One digital game on day one, globally. The PC version of Black Ops 4, the first Call of Duty release ever on Blizzard’s Battle.net, also delivered a new franchise high in which launch day PC digital sales more than doubled year on year, Activision said.
In its first day of availability, the total number of people who connected online to play Black Ops 4 increased from last year’s release.
“Black Ops 4 is an incredible game, and the community’s response to it has been amazing. We have shattered multiple digital day one sales records, and the number of people who connected online on day one to play has grown year on year,” said Rob Kostich, executive vice president and general manager of Call of Duty, in a statement. “But probably the most important thing is that the community is having so much fun across Multiplayer, Zombies and Blackout. We are so incredibly thankful for the community’s trust and support. This is just the beginning, it’s going to be an incredible journey with Black Ops 4.”
Activision said the digital downloads of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 are based on unit sell-through on the first day of availability worldwide.