The next Call of Duty, believed to be a Black Ops sequel set during the Gulf War, will be the first new entry in the popular online shooter to be on Xbox Game Pass. That’s according to a report by The Wall Street Journal today, which said the announcement will be made at Microsoft’s big annual Xbox Showcase in June.
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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 as 2024's entry, made by Treyarch Studios, was previously reported by Insider Gaming. Microsoft teased an extended Direct for an unknown game directly after its June showcase, which fans quickly pieced together to be this year’s Call of Duty reveal. According to The Verge, Microsoft had until recently been debating whether to keep Call of Duty off Game Pass, or add it and increase the price of the service. It’s unclear if the new reporting by The Wall Street Journal means Game Pass will get another price hike in 2024, or if Call of Duty will be exclusive to certain tiers.
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Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Call of Duty costs hundreds of millions to make each year, and each year it sells tens of millions of copies. The cycle was so lucrative for publisher Activision that it slowly forced every studio it owned to contribute to making the hit series. When Microsoft finished its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard last year, whether Call of Duty would join Diablo 4 and other games on Game Pass was one of the big questions.
While Microsoft made a big push behind Game Pass heading into the Xbox Series X/S console generation, subscription growth has seemingly slowed and plateaued in recent years. It’s not clear if adding Call of Duty to the service would bring in enough new monthly members to replace all of those who would decide not to buy it at full retail price of $70 as a result. Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick famously testified last year that he had decided not to put Call of Duty on subscription services precisely because the math didn’t work out financially.
Microsoft had roughly 34 million Game Pass subscribers as of February of this year. It would require three months of paid $11 subscriptions to replace the $1 billion Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 made during its opening week alone, not even accounting for the hundreds of other games Microsoft pays to be on the service. The tech giant footing the exorbitant bill to grow Game Pass might have seemed likely as recently as February when Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer told Game File, “Our intent is the full portfolio of games from ZeniMax, Activision Blizzard and XGS—Xbox Game Studios—will be on Game Pass, day one.”
