After Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has fallen short of expectations, the developers are discussing the future of the franchise and making a major announcement.
What’s happening with Call of Duty? Autumn 2025 was packed for shooter fans with highlights like ARC Raiders and Battlefield 6, along with the release of Escape from Tarkov and yet another new Call of Duty. However, the latter fell far short of expectations for a true “Black Ops 2” successor.
The game currently has only 39% positive reviews on Steam with a label of “Mostly Negative.” A clear warning to potential buyers. The player count at launch was also only 100,000 on Steam, just a third of the over 306,000 players that played the predecessor Black Ops 6 at release (via SteamDB).
Now the developers of the franchise are also speaking about the difficulties and making several announcements.
Here you can see how Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 looks:
Improvements and Major Changes in the Plan
What are the developers announcing? The most important announcement that recently went live on CallofDuty.com concerns the future releases of the franchise. The developers announced that they will no longer release two games of the same brand, namely “Black Ops” and “Modern Warfare,” successively in the future.
This means that in the future, after a “Black Ops” game, a game from the “Modern Warfare” series will follow. It remains unclear whether the developers will also release another series in the future. After “Vanguard” in 2021, only titles from the two well-known brands have been released.
Additionally, the developers explained that they want to promote meaningful innovations and that each Call of Duty should be a unique experience. They already have plans for this, but they do not want to disclose them at this point.
What happens with Black Ops 7? The latest installment is not left unmentioned; on the contrary. The developers want to make Black Ops 7 one of the best Call of Dutys ever. They say: “We will not rest until Black Ops 7 takes its place as one of the best Black Ops games we have ever developed.”
The first major update reportedly came on December 4, 2025, with Season 01. Moreover, there will be a “Free Weekend” next weekend, allowing non-buyers of Black Ops 7 to check out the multiplayer and zombie mode.
Call of Duty has not yet been able to compete against the strong competition in autumn 2025 with Black Ops 7. Whether the developers will succeed in making the new installment truly one of the best games remains to be seen. It will also be exciting to see if maybe a different Call of Duty brand will be released in 2026. Until then, the other shooters are likely to remain at the top: The biggest multiplayer shooters from autumn 2025 in ranking – Which game snags the top spot?
