Must have been really bad for them to feel the need to make a statement like this.

Playstation Store charts for the year are out. CoD only got 7th in both USA and EU. PlayStation Store’s top downloads of 2025 – PlayStation.Blog

For comparison this is how it compares to the previous 5 CoDs (US,EU):

Call of Duty Blackops 7: 7th,7th
Call of Duty Blackops 6: 1st,2nd
Call of Duty MWIII: 2nd,3rd
Call of Duty MWII: 1st,2nd
Call of Duty Vanguard: 2nd,2nd
Call of Duty Blackops Cold War: 1st,1st

Very marked decline, and it's not like a ton of other super-huge games came out this year to account for it being knocked down the ladder either.

Also notable to see Battlefield 6 ahead in both NA and EU; well deserved to be honest, it does look like a much better game.

Damn that's rough considering MWIII was very poorly received and had a relatively weak performance for COD standards but still managed top 3 in both regions. A common excuse given before was GP but that's not on Playstation so this is genuinely abysmal for COD standards. I think it'll still clear 10m but probably not by that much so the average quality of COD declining heavily is really hurting the series now so the next few need to be better cause the one this year being well received will only do so much if the one next year is another MWIII or BO7. Ideally they'd take a year off to get things back on track but they'd rather push the brand into the dirt than do that it seems.

Black Ops 7 had Call Of Duty's worst sales ranking in the US since 2008:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/black-ops-7-had-call-of-dutys-worst-sales-year-ranking-in-the-us-since-2008/1100-6537567/

Never would have thought at the beginning of last year that CoD would be only the third best selling shooter of 2025. Nor would I have guessed Ghost of Yotei would outsell it on playstation.

As great as it would be for a CoD to fail, they’re right, it won’t happen because it’s too big. Even “poorly” selling CoD games still sell millions.

Hope this is the beginning of sales falling on each iteration. Copy/ paste games don't deserve any sales at all

They are on track to having half the CCU for the Call of Duty app on Steam compared to a year before. That doesn't only mean that BO7 failed spectacularly, it means Warzone is flopping too. If that's not utterly destroying a franchise I don't know what it is.

At one point, Guitar Hero was too big to fail.

Any series can be run into the ground if its handled badly enough; it won't happen overnight, and if the next entry is better it could bounce back, but Black Ops 7 shows that COD is not invincible after all.