Modern Warfare 4 Trails Black Ops 7 on PlayStation and Xbox, Leads on Steam

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 drew a smaller share of players on PlayStation and Xbox in its launch period than Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 did in its own launch week. On Steam, the comparison runs the other way. The figures come from market analysis firm Circana, reported on 3 November 2026.

Circana's Player Engagement Tracker follows how much players play a game. It covers the United States on Steam and PlayStation, and worldwide on Xbox. Eurogamer reported the tracker's latest comparison of the two games.

Modern Warfare 4 launched on 23 October 2026. In the week ending 24 October, according to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, 19 percent of PlayStation players played it and 17 percent of Xbox players did. On Steam, 4.2 percent of players played it that week.

Black Ops 7 posted higher shares in its launch week. Circana put its engagement at 23 percent on PlayStation, 29 percent on Xbox and 1.5 percent on Steam. The tracker measures the share of each platform's players who played the game, so the Steam figures are lower in both games than the console figures.

Call of Duty placed in the top 10 on all three platforms in the week ending 24 October, according to Circana. On PlayStation, it ranked just below Fortnite.

Notebookcheck reported on 17 October 2026 that Modern Warfare 4 had more than 108,000 players on Steam on the first day of its early access period.

Black Ops 7 had a rougher reception from players when it arrived in November 2025. Eurogamer reported that Black Ops 7 had the lowest user score ever recorded for a Call of Duty game on Metacritic, a review aggregation site, and that 85 percent of users had left a negative review. Its Steam user score was 'Mixed', the middle tier on that storefront.

Its single-player campaign drew complaints too. Players could not pause it, it had no checkpoints, and it needed an online connection at all times. Solo players also had to go through matchmaking and lobby-making to start it, according to Eurogamer's November 2025 coverage. Members of the US Congress later pushed back on the game's use of AI, as Eurogamer also reported.

Activision did not share player statistics for Black Ops 7's launch weekend, according to GameSpot, which reported that in August 2025.

What this means for the franchise's next chapter is still open. For now, the numbers give one view of how the two most recent entries have started, and they point in different directions depending on the platform.