This year’s Call of Duty managed to boost US consumption despite being on Xbox Game Pass from day one.

It’s no surprise that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 improved its market results, as it’s one of the most popular and best-selling new installments in the franchise. As a result, consumption in the U.S. was up in October, according to Circana. Overall, October 2024 closed with a 10% increase over the previous year ($4.7 billion). Activision, which is owned by Microsoft, confirmed to the Washington Post that Black Ops 6 pushed total sales of the Call of Duty franchise over 500 million, making it an absolute bestseller.

Hardware sales took a big hit, with a total of $249 million, down 23% from last October. Content consumption was up 12% to $4.23 billion. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 immediately jumped to the top of the rankings, already in third place when total sales for 2024 are taken into account. The amount of money spent on subscriptions has also increased, with this year’s CoD clearly playing a role, as Circana reports that non-mobile subscriptions are up 16% compared to October 2023. Xbox has confirmed this as well, as it led to unprecedented Game Pass subscriptions for the game at the end of October.

Console content was the biggest contributor to growth, up 27% year-over-year, driven largely by digital game sales, again led by Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Circana’s Mat Piscatella revealed that PlayStation consoles accounted for 82% of the money from game console sales in October. In its first two weeks, Black Ops 6 made 23% more money than Modern Warfare 3 did last year.

Other games that did well in October included Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, Silent Hill 2 Remake, Metaphor: ReFantazio.

Source: WCCFTech