Jake Brigstock
May 17, 2024
Bang Showbiz - Gaming / VideoElephant
Microsoft will reportedly make the new Call of Duty game available on Xbox Game Pass on the day of its release, reports Wall Street Journal.
Microsoft usually makes its first-party games available on its Game Pass the same day as their official release.
It's previously reported there have been "internal debates" about whether the company wanted to add Call of Duty instalments to the subscription service and these have been ongoing for "quite some time".
And now it seems as though those talks have concluded and the latest Call of Duty title, which is speculated to be the sixth instalment of the Black Ops series, will be available on Xbox Game Pass and as normal.
Microsoft is expected to make the announcement during the company's Xbox showcase on June 9.
Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard, a developer which makes those games as well as World of Warcraft and Diablo, for an eye-watering $69 billion in a deal that went through in October 2023.
Activision usually sells copies of Call of Duty for $70/£70 each and sells around 25 million every year.
It was previously reported Microsoft was looking into upping the price of the Ultimate tier of its Game Pass but it's not yet known if this will happen and if this development will affect it.
Activision is understood to be targeting a late October release of the next Call of Duty, rumoured to be set during the Gulf War in the 1990s.
The last Black Ops game released in 2020 was set in the Cold War era.
Microsoft is also said to be planning to release the Call of Duty back catalog of video games into Game Pass ahead of the new title release.
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