Activision Exec: 'No Offense to Zelda,' But GTA6 and Modern Warfare 4 are the 'Two Biggest Games of 2026' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted 8 hours ago / 1,392 Views
Activision chief marketing officer Tyler Bahl in an interview with The Game Business said Grand Theft Auto VI and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 are the two biggest games of 2026.
"Well, no offense to Zelda, but [GTA 6 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4] are the two biggest games of the year," said Bahl. "And more people coming in to the dashboards, more people taking the dust off their Xbox or PlayStation and playing again, is going to be more eyeballs for us overall.
"And at the end of the day, what makes Call of Duty last the test of time is the community and social experience. When we look at our research and say, ‘what is the most exciting things about our games? Is it the gunplay?’ It’s actually spending time with friends. And so, we stand on our own [in that regard].
"If more people are talking about games, if there’s more press around it, that’s going to be good for everybody, not just us."
Bahl did say 2025's Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 did not meet the standards of fans and Modern Warfare 4 will be fixing the issues.
"I don’t think we were happy with every aspect of last year’s game, and we heard the feedback loud and clear," he said. "With Modern Warfare 4, we’ve tried to adjust based on that feedback. It’s getting back to a grounded military shooter. Making it cinematic, making it authentic, and bringing that edge back that Call of Duty is known for."
Activision released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in 2022 and followed that up with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in 2023. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 would release in 2024 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 in 2025. The company will no longer release back to back entries in the same subseries.
"It was not something that our community was looking for," Bahl said. "They wanted something fresh, and even though there were different time settings, and ways to play the game with new features, that tonal shift is something that they were looking for. So, we’ve already stated that a future title is going to be a new sub-franchise and we’ve already laid the groundwork. But we’re really excited about Modern Warfare 4, and that addresses some of that feedback."
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will be a more grounded game, according to Bahl.
"We’re not really holding ourselves to a specific number," he said. "It’s more about living up to those expectations that we set out at the beginning of the year. And if that works, we can go from this game to the next game and build on that foundation. But it’s about getting that right first before thinking about anything else. Because even if it delivers on sales, if people don’t like the game, we’ve missed the mark."
Bahl says the team deals with a "Call of Duty tax" when it comes to media coverage.
"We get the coverage," Bahl said. "But we call it the Call of Duty tax, when we’re thinking about the reviews or the reception. There’s obviously a lot of fandom around indie games and excitement around new games popping up every day on Steam. And Call of Duty’s been here for a very long time, and with that people sometimes forget that there’s so much work that goes into making these games. There’s 4,500 employees here that are trying to make the best possible experience.
"We have 100 million free-to-play players, we’ve sold 500 million units, it’s one of the biggest franchises of all time, and we have a billion downloads on mobile. And so that huge audience. I think, sometimes, gets overlooked or just becomes status quo. There’s craft that goes into these games, and the dedication from the teams was something that we wanted to show this year with the marketing."
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will launch for the Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam, Microsoft Store, and Battle.net on October 23.
Grand Theft Auto VI will launch for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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No one will even remember this CoD. Just like no one remembers last years Madden. Just like no one remembers the shit they last took. It's a routine release.
Gta 6 yes. Call of duty no.
I’d argue Garfield: Escape from Monday is the biggest this year.
Congratulations Tyler bahl but Beyoncé had one of the greatest videos of all time!
I don't know if a remake of a Zelda will sell anywhere near as well as Breath of the Wild did, but Breath of the Wild moved over 35m copies, which puts BotW behind only 2 CoD games with known sales, Black Ops 3 with 43m and Modern Warfare (2019) with 41m, CoD usually does between 20-30m lifetime per game, and last year's Black Ops 7 was the lowest selling in the CoD series since 2008's CoD World at War, Activision has a lot to prove with MW4 this year.
Funny how everyone is ragging on Activision CEO and COD but can anyone dispute that the franchise platforms 100+ million players a month across PlayStation, and Xbox families, Steam, Battlenet and Mobile?
If that doesn’t show how gigantic the IP is, I don’t know what will convince you. MW4 is another addition to the COD platform.
Bro thinks MW4 is in the same league as GTA6.
No offense to MW4, but GTA 6 is in a different universe. Sales will probably be closer to OOT than GTA 6.
If Zelda winds up with some crazy 40-50% attach rate, it could be a tossup between it and MW4 in sales. If someone has a better number, please share it, but the number I've seen for Black Ops 7 (2025) was between 8-9 million copies.
sounds like proud to be #2
no doubt! but for me its OOT this year
I'm sorry, but I am not even seeing MW4 in any conversation this year. They will do "player numbers" due to offering the game at a massive discount 2 months post-release, but overall revenue wise I wouldn't be shocked if the remake of OoT will do more on a single platform than MW4 on EVERY platform. What a spent franchise....
Anyone even care about Call of Duty anymore?
Yes about 100 million monthly users
I weep for humanity's collective intelligence.
Obviously GTA 6bis the biggest game of the year. But do people still care about COD anymore? The series has been in decline for a while.
I don't disagree. Multi-plats will always have greater reach than exclusives.
Agreed. Zelda OOT is fundamentally a 1998 game and that people are even pitting it against GTA6 is kinda funny to be honest
