Microsoft and Xbox seem to have accidentally confirmed that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will indeed launch on Game Pass.
This morning, users of the Xbox app on Android and iOS received a notification stating “Just announced: Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is coming to Game Pass on day one later this year!”
I can confirm personally this because I got the notification as well.
When tapped, the notification leads to a unpublished blog post on Xbox.com. Presumably, this is meant to go live later and the notification was accidentally sent out before it was meant to be.
In theory, Call of Duty was already locked in for Game Pass as various Xbox execs have stated publicly that all first-party titles, including those from Activision and Blizzard, would hit Game Pass on day 1. However, Xbox doesn’t garner itself a lot of trust these days, especially as its messaging and what its executives say often contradicts what the company actually does. Insider reports also suggested that Xbox and Microsoft were still internally debating putting Call of Duty on Game Pass.
Earlier this month though, the Wall St Journal published a report stating that Xbox had finally made the decision to put Call of Duty onto Game Pass.
Other reports recently from various leakers suggest that Xbox is planning on increasing the price of Game Pass as well as adding a new subscription tier. This could be some form of cheaper ad-supported tier which has been rumoured for some time, but the general agreement is that this new tier is somehow related to Call of Duty being put on the service.
Call of Duty coming to Game Pass is likely to be a big moment for the Xbox brand as the model is struggling to work. Subscriber growth has flatlined according to the data and Microsoft very rarely discusses actual numbers these days, also indicating that it isn’t growing. The Game Pass model is built on the idea of needing a lot of paying customers to make it not just sustainable but profitable, and it is becoming clearer and clearer that those goals are not being met.
I’m also expecting the new Call of Duty to follow the Starfield route. When Starfield launched it had a special $100 edition that provided access to the game a full five days before it “launched” on Xbox, PC and Game Pass. Despite the fact that it could be played cheaply by just subscribing to Game Pass, a surprising number of people opted to shell out the extra money to play early. I imagine Xbox will want to repeat this as a way of tempting people to still buy the game normally.
