To be frank, will it sell ? Yes, of course. This is COD we're talking about here duh.
Nonetheless considering, the lukewarm reception of that latest game, Black Ops series two years in a row(we know how it ended for MWII to MWIII) and the fact Battlefield 6 basically exploded in terms of sales and popularity.

It clear that for this year at least, BO7 isn't going to be the dominant force some expect it to be. Actually worldwide, I'd say B6 will beat out BO7. The only market it could outperform the former, likely the US as usual.

Don't know if a potential "bad" year could indicate a shift for the series in the following years, but imo, that's honestly deserved.

There have been over 23 titles of CoD, and over 50 if you include the mobile games / spin-offs.

Back in late 2024, we were told Call of Duty has reached over 500m sales total as a franchise. 
So the bare minimum the avg games sells is 10m.

The highest selling call of duty games are:
Black Ops 3 (43m), Modern warfare (41m), Black Ops (1) (31m)..... the other games are all below 30m.

This game Black Ops 7, is not hitting 30m, no way.
(since game-pass is a thing, game sales won't beat older records.... it does take away sales. And BO7 isn't looking like its one of the best selling CoD games)

well I can tell you it’ll certainly be the biggest game this year. Whether that be in GP player data or sales data. Also, most of the mainline CoD console releases have hit 25mil (and Vanguard hit 30mil as well).

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/466294/call-of-duty-black-ops-7-uk-retail-launch-sales-are-61-lower-than-black-ops-6/

While it'll still sell 10 million plus just cos it has "Call of Duty" on the box and casuals generally have low standards, it does look like the game is underperforming by series standards, which is honestly deserved as it looks really poor and uninspired.

I feel like they need to move away from a yearly release when needed. Maybe move to a free-to-play model similar to Fortnite for the multiplayer with the option to buy the campaigns when they release all in one place. Black Ops 7 and Modern Warfare 3 feel half-baked and were made just to keep the annual releases going. 

Why hasn't CoD moved away from yearly releases and shifted to a fully live service model where the game is just free to play with microtransactions and get updated permanently? Sure, it removes full price revenue, but it would lead to a bigger user base, the possbility to get more younger players into CoD, and besides being on gamepass already means that the old model of selling full price copies every year is already degraded by being free on gamepass.

I feel the same way and pretty much what I said in my post above yours. They can still release campaigns and charge for those, but they don't need to release them every year. Perhaps have the Game Pass day one release just include the campaigns, while the multiplayer is free-to-play with battle passes that come out every few months or so.

It's still going to be profitable and sell over 10 million units, but I do think PC will definitely be down by percentage of players and this will be an off year for COD by their standards.

Black Flops 7? Good news to wake up to :D

(i) NA is where it matters. Wouldn’t be celebrating too soon. (ii)  Why is it good news that a game has underperformed? I mean… I guess if the underperformance leads Microsoft to innovate the formula, then that’s great! But I kinda feel like a flop would sooner lead to layoffs. (Not to mention: When a franchise is in turmoil, Microsoft is infamous for changing it for the worse. Two immediate examples of this would be Halo & really just the entirety of Rare. Also Bethesda with Starfield.)