It feels like forever since we had a big gaming rivalry. Since the dawn of Call of Duty it has gone through patches of directly competing with other big-name shooter franchises, whether they were Medal of Honor, Halo or Battlefield, with everyone obliged to take a side. It’s kind of nostalgic to see it happening again, with the announcement that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7‘s current beta is being extended by an extra 24 hours, to bring it close enough to Battlefield 6‘s release to creepily whisper in its ear.
The current CoDBlops 7 beta was due to come to an end at 12 p.m. EDT on Wednesday 8 October, but has now been given a 24 hour extension, along with a brand new map to play on and double XP rewarded until the new deadline of Thursday 9th. And you know this was planned from the start, designed to tread on BF6‘s heels as much as possible.
The sixth and final map is Toshin, the much vaunted Japanese setting complete with cherry blossoms, a downtown shopping district, and a rather unfortunate central monorail crash. The update from the Call of Duty patchnotes blog also mentions that double XP and double weapon XP will be running through the end of the beta on Thursday, trying to keep as many eyes looking toward this franchise and not glancing away at EA’s rival.
Reports from the beta so far have suggested issues with mulitplayer matchmaking (which of course is one of the reasons these betas are run in the first place—to try to get on top of problems like this before the release), as well as grumbles about TTK and oddly enough, the game’s closing doors.
Come the end of the beta, attention returns to Blops 6 and season 6’s The Haunting event for Halloween from October 9, which also happens to be the day Battlefield 6 comes out. At that point, FPS fans’ attentions will be torn, but many will be tempted by the shiny new object.
Battlefield 6 then has more than a month to itself, with Black Ops 7 not out until November 14 and not planning any more betas before then. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s long enough for BF6 players to have had their fill and be willing to move across, or if both games can maintain their own audiences in the holiday season. Certainly Activision and EA are both planning an awful lot of post-game content to try to keep everyone’s attention, and I’m looking forward to sitting back with popcorn to watch it all play out.
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