Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 sets a release date for the end of October, open beta on the way
Gameplay reveal shows off a typically subtle approach to post-Cold War combat in the nineties
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will release this October, including a day one launch on Game Pass, with an open beta on the way - and it’s certainly looking like a Call of Duty game.
The shooter opened Microsoft's Xbox Games Showcase tonight with a gameplay reveal trailer, interspersing live-action clips of Presidents Bush and Clinton with planes dropping bombs, burning oil wells, helicopters, exploding vehicles and lots of bullets whizzing about. The typically subtle reveal was backed by The Prodigy’s Firestarter
The trailer also confirmed that Black Ops 6 takes place in the nineties after the end of the Cold War. As well as the very Call of Duty-looking gunfights, there were some snippets of what looked to be more James Bond-esque espionage levels, with talk of a compromised agency, traitors, conspiracies, hidden truths and some kind of biohazard threat.
As well as the campaign, there’ll be the returning multiplayer - with a dozen six-on-six maps, plus four four smaller Strike maps - and Zombies modes, with the latter having two maps at launch.
In a clear dig at Call of Duty’s more recent console home on PlayStation, Xbox’s Phil Spencer highlighted that the showcase appearance was the first on-stage Xbox showing for a Call of Duty game in a decade, before confirming that the game’s upcoming beta, season expansions and updates will land simultaneously across all platforms.
Spencer went on to drop the tidbit that Call of Duty currently has over 100 million players - colour me personally surprised at the size of that sustained audience, honestly, even with Warzone taken into account - before reconfirming, as we already knew, that Black Ops 6 will arrive in Game Pass on day one.
That Day One will specifically be October 25th of this year, with an open beta arriving sometime before that. We’ll no doubt find out more shortly during the game’s own dedicated Direct after the Xbox showcase.