If you’re a Call of Duty fan with Microsoft’s Game Pass, you may be able to skip out on the next game’s premium price tag later this year.
Xbox head Phil Spencer confirmed today that Activision and Blizzard games will begin coming to Game Pass starting with Diablo 4 on March 28. This effectively opens the door for other games from both Activision and Blizzard Entertainment to be offered on the subscription service that is playable on both Xbox consoles and PC.
“And it’s all part of our commitment to make Xbox, the Xbox experience, and the games that we build as widely available as possible,” Spencer said on a Feb. 15 Xbox podcast. “So now the 34 million Game Pass members can all enjoy the fantastic experience of Diablo 4.”
The caveat here is that Diablo 4 was originally released in June 2023, so the possibility of new CoD titles launching on Game Pass on day one is still up in the air. Head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty reiterated that “all of our games will go into Game Pass on day one,” but did not specify about other franchises outside of Microsoft’s in-house studios like anything from Activision or Blizzard.
Spencer did address CoD indirectly by saying it’s part of the company’s bigger investment strategy to bring games to more platforms, saying “it’s not about one device” and “it’s not about games in service of a device, but, rather, the devices that people want to play on should be in service of making the games as big and popular as they possibly could be.”
For now, at the very least, it appears promising that classic CoD titles may be joining Game Pass in the foreseeable future. As for new releases like CoD 2024 and beyond, Xbox should clarify that someday soon.
The full transcript of the podcast can be found on the Xbox website.
