Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 attracted a smaller share of active Xbox and PlayStation players during its launch week than Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 did in 2025, according to new figures from market research firm Circana. However, the latest installment performed considerably better on Steam, highlighting different engagement patterns across the three gaming platforms.
Circana analyst Mat Piscatella published the comparison on Bluesky on November 2, using data from the company’s Player Engagement Tracker. During the week ending October 24, 2026, Call of Duty was played by 17% of tracked active Xbox users worldwide, 19% of tracked PlayStation users in the United States and 4.2% of tracked US Steam users.
For comparison, during Black Ops 7’s launch week ending November 15, 2025, Call of Duty reached 29% of active Xbox users, 23% of PlayStation users and 1.5% of Steam users across the corresponding tracking populations.
The figures represent a 12-percentage-point decline on Xbox and a four-percentage-point decline on PlayStation. Steam moved in the opposite direction, increasing by 2.7 percentage points, with Modern Warfare 4’s launch-week engagement share measuring 2.8 times the figure recorded during Black Ops 7’s launch.
Despite the weaker year-over-year console comparison, Modern Warfare 4 still produced a substantial increase in Call of Duty activity across the tracked platforms. Circana’s weekly engagement rankings placed the franchise second on PlayStation and third on Xbox during the week ending October 24. On US Steam, Call of Duty climbed from 32nd to sixth place.
These rankings measure weekly active players rather than peak concurrent users. Consequently, they provide a different perspective from Steam concurrent player comparisons, which measure how many users are playing simultaneously.
The largest difference between the two launches appeared on Xbox, where several factors complicate direct comparisons.
Black Ops 7 launched directly into Xbox Game Pass in November 2025, allowing eligible subscribers to access the game without purchasing it separately. Modern Warfare 4 did not receive the same day-one subscription release, potentially affecting how many Xbox users played during its opening week.
The difference in availability is important when interpreting the latest results. A subscription release can encourage players who might otherwise avoid purchasing a full-priced game to try it, although Circana’s engagement percentages do not establish how much of the Xbox decline resulted from the absence of Game Pass.
The new figures also provide additional context for earlier comparisons of Modern Warfare 4 and Black Ops 7's Xbox launch activity. Circana’s percentages measure the share of active users who played Call of Duty, rather than establishing a directly comparable total number of players for either release.
Launch timing introduces another limitation. Modern Warfare 4 provided early access to its campaign and DMZ modes before its full release on October 23, meaning some players could begin engaging with the game ahead of the main multiplayer launch. Black Ops 7 followed a different release schedule, making the respective launch-week tracking periods imperfect equivalents.
Geographic coverage also varies across Circana’s datasets. Its PlayStation and Steam figures represent tracked US players, while the Xbox figures cover a worldwide panel. These percentages therefore should not be interpreted as a direct comparison of the total player populations across platforms.
Furthermore, Circana’s measurements track activity associated with Call of Duty rather than providing independently separated player counts for every game or mode accessible through the franchise’s shared ecosystem.
The engagement data cannot establish how many copies of Modern Warfare 4 were sold or whether the game generated more or less revenue than Black Ops 7. Sales performance is a separate measure, particularly when subscription availability and digital purchasing patterns differ between releases.
Modern Warfare 4 has nevertheless demonstrated commercial activity outside these engagement measurements, including leading the UK physical game sales chart following its release. That ranking covers a different market and measurement period from Circana’s player activity statistics.
The newly published comparison establishes that Call of Duty reached a smaller proportion of tracked console players during Modern Warfare 4’s launch than during Black Ops 7’s debut, while attracting a larger proportion of the US Steam audience. Further sales and engagement reporting will be needed to determine how these contrasting launch results translate into the game’s longer-term performance.
