Activision Blizzard has made a surprise announcement about Game Pass.
In a tweet a few hours ago, they said:
“It’s awesome to see anticipation building for Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® III. As we continue to work toward regulatory approval of the Microsoft deal, we’ve been getting some questions whether our upcoming and recently launched games will be available via Game Pass.
While we do not have plans to put Modern Warfare® III or Diablo IV into Game Pass this year, once the deal closes, we expect to start working with Xbox to bring our titles to more players around the world. And we anticipate that we would begin adding games into Game Pass sometime in the course of next year.”
As reported by Jez Corden at Windows Central, his own sources claim that Activision Blizzard actually won’t wait until 2024, and plan to start bringing games to Game Pass as soon as the Microsoft – Activision deal is finalized.
Microsoft did reactivate the servers for Call of Duty games on their old consoles, Xbox One and Xbox 360. That means players who kept their copies of their older games active through to their Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S console, or bought those games to play on the new consoles, can play those old games on those original servers.
That all happened before the deal was finalized, though it does seem like something that didn’t necessarily require a lot of money or any binding contract to accomplish. What Activision and Blizzard can bring to Game Pass after their Microsoft deal is approved could be much more substantial.
Just to give you an idea, here are some titles that Activision and Blizzard published on the Xbox 360 that they can bring back via Game Pass:
- Transformers games
- Spider-Man games
- James Bond 007 games
- Prototype
- Deadpool
- Tony Hawk games
- Cabela’s games
To be clear, the wording on Activision Blizzard’s tweet was actually referring to newer games they have on the pipeline. So that will definitely include the next Call of Duty, but what else?
Given the number of games that the company released in this year, including Diablo IV and World of Warcraft Dragonflight, the only one they had previously announced and is still unreleased is Blizzard’s upcoming survival MMO.
Jez revealed last year that this game is going by the title Odyssey, and it will be an entirely new IP, with a fairy tale theme. Surprisingly, the game is being developed by Rare, and it is a survival MMO in the same vein as the Ark franchise.
Activision Blizzard may have even more games in the pipeline that they haven’t even announced yet. We may be seeing them reveal it as soon the deal is done.
