An unprecedented sale just skyrocketed Call of Duty Modern Warfare above Black Ops 7. Is it a clue to what's next?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (the 2019 reboot, for those keeping track) has achieved the impressive feat of overtaking its brother on Steam, surpassing the combined player count of the overarching Call of Duty launcher that plays home to Black Ops 7, BO6, and Warzone. How has it done this? It’s all thanks to by far the biggest sale Microsoft and Activision have ever deployed on the platform, dropping its price by a whopping 90%, far beyond anything the COD games usually offer. It’s a great time to dive in, but could that generosity be a clue to where the series is headed next?

I was skeptical about slapping the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare name onto an entirely new game, but 2019’s Modern Warfare absolutely delivers, with a campaign that Jordan praised in his review as the best in the series since the original COD 4: Modern Warfare. He hailed it as “a new gold standard” for the FPS games “that will be hard for sequels to match,” and that’s proven to be the case, with few reaching those heights since. Right now, you can pick the game up for just 10% of its usual price on Steam, and plenty of people are doing exactly that.

In the past 24 hours, Modern Warfare has reached an active player count high of 53,410, a hefty leap over the current Call of Duty’s 45,157, despite that version incorporating multiple games in one place. At the time of writing, the elder statesman is holding twice the in-game headcount of its younger, spryer sibling. It even currently boasts more players than Battlefield 6, which has been running a free trial for the past week.

Such a deep discount is unprecedented among the Call of Duty series. Looking across the past games, it’s incredibly rare to see discounts any lower than half price, although there are a few scattershot instances of Activision slicing two-thirds off the cost of some of its older entries during Steam sales. If you’ve ever been curious to try the Modern Warfare campaign, it’s the ideal opportunity. You can also dive into multiplayer, of course, and players are reporting it to be absolute chaos at the moment due to the massive influx of newcomers.

Seeing the price dropped so low has got me curious, however, and looking across social media there’s a similar sentiment. Why was Modern Warfare specifically singled out? The signs in the water have already been pointing towards our next Call of Duty game being Modern Warfare 4. If I were looking to drum up some hype for my new announcement, I’d probably encourage the audience to try the beloved starting point of that ongoing arc.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is 90% off on Steam until Thursday March 26, so expect to pay just $5.99 / £4.99 for your copy. Head here to grab it while the discount lasts.

If you’ve had Modern Warfare sitting on your wishlist, it’s probably the time to take the plunge, because I doubt we’ll see a price this low again any time soon. Or perhaps that huge resurgence in attention will light a fire under Microsoft and Activision, and they’ll realize that dropping their old games down to real bargain prices is a good idea.