With Battlefield 6 hitting PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on October 10, analysts believe that EA’s military shooter could sell a whopping five million copies within its first week on the market.
Veteran games journalist Christopher Dring sat down with games industry researcher and analyst Joost van Dreunen to mull over EA’s $55 billion deal on October 2. During the conversation, hosted on Dring’s The Game Business Show website and podcast, the two discussed Battlefield 6’s highly successful beta–which attracted an estimated 25 million players, surpassed 2.4 million Steam wishlists, and has 1.7 million Steam preorders. These figures, according to van Dreunen and London-based market researchers Ampere Analysis, suggest that Battlefield 6 could absolutely dominate at launch.
“However, Battlefield 6 clearly has huge momentum,” Dring wrote. “Ampere believes the game will sell five million units in its first week, and the excitement for the game is growing as we near its October 10 launch. It’s pretty much guaranteed a big day one, and if it can deliver a strong start, that will likely have a knock-on effect on Call of Duty (which arrives over a month later).”
For reference, reports suggest that 2021’s Battlefield 2024 sold 4.23 million units within its first week.
Call of Duty and Battlefield are fairly different beasts, with the former focusing mostly on smaller engagements and direct firefights while the latter is known for its enormous maps and blend of infantry and vehicular combat. However, they nevertheless fight for a similar audience, and we’ve often seen them matched up against each other during the fall gaming blitz. Perhaps the most notable was in 2011, which saw the release of Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3.
Battlefield 6 had a couple of betas in August, which were apparently so optimized that, according to EA, many players jumped into the military-shooting action with minimum PC specs. And now that we’re a week away from the game’s full launch, you can pre-load the game on PlayStation and Xbox right now. The first season kicks off on October 28, and the Achievements/Trophies have been revealed if you’re curious what it takes to get them.
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