Access to the new Call of Duty game on day one via Xbox Game Pass may not occur in the future.
In 2023, Microsoft completed the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the publisher of the Call of Duty franchise. Beginning in 2024, games from the franchise began joining The Game Pass lineup. The most recent two games in the franchise, black Ops 6 and Black Ops 7, were also available day one via Xbox Game Pass.
In 2024, Christopher Dring of GamesIndustry.biz told the BBC that CoD games on Xbox Game Pass would be the biggest test for subscription models in gaming, “because if Call of Duty can’t move the needle in terms of subscriber numbers, probably nothing will.”
Now, new information suggests that the results from that test are in.
Call of Duty Day One Game Pass Release Possibly in Doubt at Xbox
During a recent livestream, Jez Corden mentioned that he’d heard of the possibility that Xbox may remove Call of Duty from Game Pass as a day-and-date launch this year. Xbox is currently undergoing a massive shake-up and regime change following Asha Sharma’s appointment as the CEO of Microsoft Gaming in the wake of Phil Spencer’s retirement.
“If they take Call of Duty out of Game Pass this year, which is a possibility from what I’ve heard. I think it’ll kind of reveal some of the cracks in the strategy, possibly, but I don’t know.”
Corden also discussed how, in his view, the integration of CoD into Game Pass could have hurt the franchise.
“Call of Duty is going to vacuum up a lot of that revenue, which kind of eats into how much money you’ve got month over month to actually get new content. And you need new content to prevent churn,” he said. “Even in an off year. Call of Duty is so big that it sort of harms Game Pass, but at the same time, the idea that you don’t have to buy Call of Duty and get it for cheaper kind of also hurts Call of Duty in reverse.”
As of now, nothing has been confirmed about the future of the military shooter on Game Pass. Insider Gaming will continue to monitor this story and report any updates. For more Game Pass, check out the story of Netflix and Xbox potentially creating a bundle.
What do you think? Do you want to continue seeing CoD on Game Pass? Would it affect you in any way? Sound off in our official Discord server. Also, don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Christopher Dringe is such a phony. He is the same guy who said that Xbox is done investing into getting games put on Game Pass like a year or year and a half ago. Clearly that was BS. He has done nothing but hurt the company by spewing out BS headlines of things that he had heard or talked about with random anonymous developers. Whenever Christopher Dringe is involved I don’t even think of the article as anything more than a fanboys opinion piece.
As for this articles topic… I wouldnt mind one bit if CoD came off the service, and would actually be very happy if that in turn brought the price down a bit. I played BO6 campaign which I liked. Then BO7 I played on launch day n never again. I used to love CoD but have fully grown out of it. They need to cut the yearly drops and give these devs more time to actually make some significant changes and updates to the systems.
Maybe it helps. They need to buy Take2 next.
They probably wo t be able to up sub numbers they took away alot of reward points and now takes for ever to build up said points. Then let’s add that it cost 30 bucks for premium totally not worth it if you are like me and only play a few games. Cheaters and hackers ha e ruined some games and xbox doesn’t seem to care. My next purchase is play station. I have been a loyal xbox user for ten years and they lost me.