This fall, two main competitors in the arcade shooter genre are entering the market: Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Battlefield 6. Their confrontation has attracted the community, and the winner has been clear — the new CoD has become an object of ridicule and dissatisfaction, while Battlefield has confidently secured its status as the main event of the year.

Call of Duty traditionally remains the best-selling game series, but against the backdrop of Black Ops 7, it seems that Activision itself is slipping players the best PR for its competitor. A wave of negative comments under the trailer, as well as memes about the best anti-advertising, signals one thing: audience fatigue from conveyor-belt production and a business model with endless microtransactions that destroy the shooter's style.

The Conveyor <b>of Game Design is Broken</b>

Call of Duty has always been good at generating hype: powerful trailers, loud slogans, and promises of a "new experience." But in the case of Black Ops 7, the promo campaign played against the game itself. The video collected 300 thousand dislikes and tens of thousands of comments ridiculing the project. For fans, this became "deja vu" — the situation repeats one-to-one the shame of Infinite Warfare, when the community rejected the attempt to pass off a copy of the mechanics of past parts as innovation.

Black Ops 7 is perceived not as a new chapter in the series, but as an assembly of used parts. The plot revolves around the return of the antagonist from Black Ops 2 and "hallucinations" in the protagonist's head. And the campaign is based on the Avalon map, which was originally designed as an arena for Warzone. But due to the decline in popularity of the Battle Royale, the new region was canceled in favor of betting on success after the return of Verdansk. Now the unreleased map has been revived to save resources.

A similar story happened with the "revolutionary" PvE mode. Activision presented it as something grandiose, comparable to raids in Destiny. But in reality, they presented a slightly modified zombie mode from Modern Warfare 3 (2023): the same crowds of hostile bots, increasing difficulty, the same empty spaces, only without PvP and evacuation mechanics.

In addition to fake innovations, the developers decided to bring back game mechanics that did not receive recognition from the audience. Black Ops 7 will feature Carry Forward – transferring all of the player's progress and inventory from Black Ops 6 to Black Ops 7. But given the big differences between both parts — this will lead to chaos. In the 2035 setting, alongside futuristic guns, there will be machine guns from the 90s. And all the skins and characters that don't fit into the setting of a military shooter will appear on the battlefield: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Beavis and Butt-Head, and American Dad. The atmosphere will disappear again, and a circus will appear in its place.

No less dissatisfaction is caused by the return to the expanded movement, which buried the interest of fans in Advanced Warfare and Infinite Warfare. The target audience of Call of Duty loves "Boots on the Ground" gameplay — a grounded style where shooting and reaction are important, not acrobatics. Instead, Black Ops 7 offers futuristic wall running and double jumps, as if the developers forgot how things were 10 years ago.

The picture is completed by the abilities of characters familiar from Black Ops 4. "Specialists" with ultimate skills can destroy several opponents in one moment, turning a classic shooter into a clone of Overwatch. For fans, this was and is perceived as a betrayal of the spirit of the series. With such a mechanic, victory depends not on skill, but on the choice of a character with the most imbalanced superpower.

<b>Price does not match quality</b>

Along with disgusting game design decisions, Call of Duty faces a number of technical problems. They drag on from part to part and undermine the trust of players. The most striking example is Black Ops 6. Owners of the Steam version still complain about unstable FPS and crashes, while the same game, launched through the Microsoft Store, works stably. This is not the only problem, but Activision is in no hurry to fix anything.

Criticism also concerns the approach to platforms. In 2025, Activision is still releasing Call of Duty on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. From a business point of view, this is logical — tens of millions of players are still sitting on consoles of the old generation. But for the franchise, this has become a serious brake. The limitations of outdated systems prevent the introduction of modern technologies. Battlefield 6, on the contrary, abandoned the past generation, betting on destructibility and new graphical capabilities. And players appreciated this contrast.

If Activision demonstrates complete negligence in technical solutions, then the company's pricing policy looks like outright mockery of players not from the USA. If Battlefield 6 in other regions is cheaper and adapted to the economy of local countries (for example, $37 in China and $65 in Kazakhstan), then the new Call of Duty, on the contrary, turned out to be more expensive. While US citizens pay $70 for the standard edition, in other countries the price reaches $80-95, which makes it less accessible in a number of Steam regions than Battlefield.

Players naturally ask the question: who at Activision is engaged in pricing and what guides them? There is a feeling that the company deliberately overestimates the cost in order to push the audience to Game Pass. The logic is simple: paying $70-100 for Black Ops 7 is pointless when you can get the same game as part of a service subscription. But this approach is not perceived as care for users, but as an aggressive attempt to drive them into the Microsoft ecosystem.

Against this background, Battlefield's marketing moves look doubly advantageous. Electronic Arts stimulates interest in the series through profitable promotions: Battlefield 2042 added a free battle pass with exclusive items for the sixth part, and the game itself is sold at a 95% discount. For players this is a real benefit, and for the brand — competent advertising. As a result, Battlefield is perceived as a shooter that respects its buyer, and Call of Duty — as a project that tries to squeeze the maximum amount of money out of the audience at any cost.

<b>The Return of Competition</b>

The appearance of Battlefield 6 has changed the very dynamics of the market. For the first time in many years, Call of Duty has ceased to be an undisputed purchase "out of habit." Players who previously considered CoD the only major arcade shooter are now seriously thinking about what to spend their money on.

Comments under the Black Ops 7 trailer on YouTube have turned into free advertising for the competitor and are gaining more upvotes than the promo video itself. Even bloggers who have supported Call of Duty for years have begun to openly say that after hundreds of hours in the BF6 beta, they "felt like their eyes were opened".

Even sales statistics are starting to work against Call of Duty. At the time of writing, Black Ops 7 is in 32nd place in global sales on Steam. At the same time, Battlefield 6 continues to hold the top 10 best-selling games by pre-order. And this is despite the fact that CoD traditionally dominated before.

<b>Analysis</b>

The situation with Black Ops 7 showed that even the most recognizable brand in the industry is not immune to a crisis of confidence. The new part instead of freshness and ambition offers the audience a product seasoned with inflated prices. As a result, the flagship project has turned into a source of ridicule and memes.

On the other pole was Battlefield 6 — a shooter that filled the void in the community and managed to offer the desired experience with a realistic setting, working destructibility, open beta, and honest marketing. Where Activision lost contact with its audience, EA, on the contrary, showed that it was ready to listen to it. Even if the goal of the publishers is the same — to make as much money as possible.

Therefore, the reaction of the community this year looks natural: Call of Duty is no longer perceived as a mandatory annual purchase. And the phrase: "Black Ops 7 is the best advertisement for Battlefield 6", — born in the comments under the trailer, turned out to be the most accurate characterization of what is happening.