Despite Long Queues, Battlefield 6’s Open Beta Playercount Is Skyrocketing
Today, the Battlefield 6 Open Beta has gone live after several weeks of previews that stunned many onlookers and made them believe that this may in fact be an all-timer for the series. Now, players are getting their hands on the game for themselves.
To say that there’s significant interest in the Battlefield 6 beta is an understatement. As I write this, the Open Beta is hitting new highs, and passed 300,000 concurrent players a few hours ago on Steam. It’s in fourth place, only behind the never-ending staples of CS2, Dota 2 and PUBG. It’s already climbed to 323,000 and continues to go higher every few minutes. Battlefield 6 is already the 7th most-played game on PlayStation despite release just a few hours ago. In the US, it is 8:45 AM EDT on a Thursday…
The question here is if Battlefield 6 can put an actual dent in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 this fall, its eternal rival that it has not competed with in any truly significant capacity. There was a story going around from Tom Henderson the last few days that Activision leadership is not concerned with Battlefield 6 and believes Call of Duty is “too big to fail.” But they are also “keeping a close eye on Battlefield.”
Is Activision right? Maybe. Call of Duty essentially never loses its throne of the best-selling game of the year any time there isn’t a Grand Theft Auto out, albeit one recent exception was Hogwarts Legacy. But pride comes before the fall, and Call of Duty players have had it with certain aspects of the game, from stale gameplay to cheaters to goofy Fortnite-ish skins that keep being added to its cash shop.
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So far, outside of long waits and some technical issues, the response to actual Battlefield 6 gameplay seems to be largely positive. Those who aren’t in the beta are at least watching it. Battlefield 6 currently has 755,000 viewers on Twitch alone, more than triple the next closest game, League of Legends, and almost eight times as many as Fortnite, which just launched an entirely new season today.
It is hard to imagine that Battlefield 6 is going to be anything less than an unequivocal success when it’s released later this fall. The bar does not need to be beating Call of Duty to be considered a major hit, albeit I’m sure that’s a milestone DICE and EA would die to hit. We’ll see if it’s remotely possible.
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