Modern Warfare 4 came out on 23 October, and the UK boxed sales chart published by GfK on 26 October puts it at number one, according to Abyan Khan for Techtroduce. A number one says nothing about volume sold. And the August beta left two issues open, which we detailed on 11 October : spawns (the points where players reappear) together with map design, then time-to-kill.
Modern Warfare 4 tops boxed sales, with no volume figure
In the GfK UK physical sales chart, the game beats Nintendo Switch Sports Resort in second place and EA Sports FC 27, which drops from first to third. The split of Modern Warfare 4 boxed copies is 78% for PS5, 19% for Xbox Series and 3% for Switch 2.
These percentages are not sales figures. The chart counts boxes only, without downloads, and GfK does not publish a number of copies. The 3% for Switch 2 measures that console’s share among boxed buyers, not its weight in the series. The UK first place remains a partial snapshot of the first week.
Critics, with a score that needs a date
On the press side, Paul Tassi, in Forbes, noted on 23 October a Metacritic score of 84 on PC, based on about twenty reviews. He calls it « Its best in 15 years since Modern Warfare 3, in fact » (Modern Warfare 3 scored 88 in 2011). For context, he cites Black Ops 6 at 82 and Black Ops 7 at 65. His summary: the game is « and it’s really good, in the context of the series ».
This 84 is dated 23 October: a Metacritic score moves with every review added. Tassi also notes that user scores are often lower than press scores for a Call of Duty, sometimes by a lot. They were not yet open when he wrote.
On Steam, a shared peak and a campaign rated above the whole
According to GamingHQ (Noize), on 26 October, the Call of Duty app on Steam peaked at 198,308 concurrent players on 23 October, after rising in a week from 32nd to 7th among the most played games. GameRant (Adrian Morales), on 25 October, cites 227,434 according to SteamDB. The two figures differ by source and date, and neither refers to Modern Warfare 4 alone: the app is shared with Black Ops 7 and Warzone.
The beta had peaked at 115,145 Steam players before losing more than half of its players in a day, according to TweakTown. Reviews followed: about 36% positive out of nearly 7,000 in late August. At launch, GameRant reports a « Very Positive » rating, with 80% of English-language reviews recommending the game, and a campaign that reached 94% positive during early access. The comparison with the beta is fragile: it is neither the same product nor the same sample. The gap between 94% and 80% suggests multiplayer drags the score down, but that is a deduction, as GameRant gives no breakdown.
What launch fixed from the beta, and what is still criticised
| Beta issue | What sources say at launch |
|---|---|
| Time-to-kill | The second beta weekend tuning is kept (Pixeltwelve); GamingHQ notes that some players still criticise time-to-kill and skill-based matchmaking |
| Spawns and map design | No source we read documents this point at launch, either way |
| New complaints | Shared series launcher, multiplayer balance, technical issues (GameRant) |
On the first issue, Infinity Ward has not reopened the tuning: Pixeltwelve writes that the second beta weekend time-to-kill is unchanged, with adjustments for SMGs, flinch taken and damage of one-shot weapons. Spawns remain a point with no hard answer: we found no player feedback on them since 23 October.
Launch has its own flaws too. In his 8/10 review on 25 October, Milo Cross notes: PC crashes in competitive matches, invisible buttons in the Xbox on PC version and matches judged uneven on PS5. The 24 October update fixed some crashes, without solving every PC problem. The publisher’s QA testers had also voted to authorise a strike on 15 October, eight days before release.
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