Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s recent beta test was “the biggest CoD beta ever,” according to Activision.
The six-day early access beta and three-day open beta across all platforms surpassed every other CoD game’s beta to become number one in total players, hours played, playtime per player, and most matches played, Activision announced today.
The feat is cool but should come as no surprise. Several previous betas featured some form of exclusivity for the first week, such as being only playable on PS5 for the past few CoD titles before opening up to all platforms.
Since Microsoft purchased Activision last year, though, the company made BO6’s beta the first in a while to be available on all platforms at the same time. This undoubtedly helped boost the open beta’s numbers as opposed to being limited to one player base from the outset.
BO6’s beta was popular, but not perfect. In my review of the beta, I expressed both optimism and genuine concern. Pain points include map design, spawns, packet loss and lag issues, skill-based matchmaking, and more.
But the bottom line is the game is still pretty fun to play once the new omnimovement learning curve is tackled. It may scare some casual players away, but for now, a lot of the CoD community is excited about how new the movement feels in BO6.
BO6 will forego the past few games’ pattern of including a period of campaign early access, though, so players will all have to wait until the same day to hop into the action, regardless of what they play first.
Multiplayer is just one slice of the BO6 pie. When the game fully launches on Oct. 25, it will also include a robust Zombies mode featuring two round-based maps, and a full-length campaign on top of the addictive multiplayer component.
