Microsoft seem to be dropping hints that Call of Duty games are coming to Game Pass. But is everyone jumping the gun on this one?
Game Pass Tracker on Twitter shared this information:
“BREAKING #GAMEPASS NEWS
Stop scrolling!
Looks like Activision is gearing up for something BIG!
In fact, it *LOOKS* like all Call of Duty games are coming to #GamePass
Try buying Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and you’ll see this message:
“Receive this item for FREE with your gaming subscription! (Game Pass) Checkout and it’s yours FOREVER!”
Is #XboxGamePass getting CoD games soon?!
It sure seems that way, especially with the Actvision | Blizzard | King acquisition by Microsoft supposedly closing by no later than October 18th of next month.
We’re less than a month away!”
We have embedded a picture of the said screenshot below.
So should we put our faith in this new notification? Of course, it stands to reason that Microsoft would put Call of Duty games on Game Pass. These games have a huge following, and gamers, including professional players, would appreciate having them available as part of Game Pass. For many of those players, that would save them money.
But, we have to point out something here that Microsoft has brought up before. And that is their repeated testimony that they would not be able to immediately bring Call of Duty onto Game Pass.
It was only last year that Microsoft explained to the CMA that Activision’s preexisting agreement with Sony would block them from bringing Call of Duty games to Game Pass.
And then, this March, the CMA released a report indicating that Call of Duty games would not be coming to Game Pass until 2025. Most recently, last August, Phil Spencer explained that there would be ‘mechanical work’ that needs to be put in to bring the games to Game Pass. And even then, Phil hadn’t known that most of the world would be getting Call of Duty games on the cloud via Ubisoft, instead of Microsoft.
But is there anything else that could have changed to change these conditions that we had known about for months now? In fact, yes there is.
On July 16, 2023, Sony signed a deal with Microsoft so that PlayStation would continue to get Call of Duty games for the next ten years, after Microsoft finalizes their acquisition of their parent company, Activision Blizzard King. In fact, we found out later that that deal allows Sony to put Call of Duty games on PS Plus.
Does that Sony deal also allow Microsoft to bring Call of Duty games to Game Pass earlier than we had been discussing for all this time? If that’s the case, then it’s likely that Microsoft already told the CMA about this, and it’s part of their deliberations for the final decision.
We imagine Microsoft may be already working on getting the infrastructure of the older Call of Duty games that they made backwards compatible, including their online servers, to be ready on Game Pass as soon as they’re allowed to. Maybe it isn’t too wild to believe that Call of Duty Hub was designed to accelerate access to the latest Call of Duty games to Game Pass as well.
