Due to the FTC's pending court case against Microsoft over the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft has been quite slow in merging Activision IP with the wider Xbox ecosystem. We expected to see an update on Activision games coming to Game Pass in June during the Xbox Showcase, but nothing materialised. Fortunately, it sounds like good news is just around the corner.
According to WindowsCentral's Jez Corden, Activision titles will finally begin landing on Game Pass in August. Microsoft already brought Diablo 4 over to the service in March of this year. The next wave of games could include titles like Crash Bandicoot, Tony Hawk and Spyro, and this rollout should begin in August.
Unfortunately, we aren't going to get a massive drop of past Call of Duty titles on Game Pass. There has been a big question mark around how Microsoft will handle Call of Duty. Apparently, there was even an internal debate within Microsoft over whether or not to bring this year's COD release to Game Pass at launch. It seems the plan has since been settled on. New COD titles will be launching onto Game Pass, starting with Black Ops 6 later this year. As for the massive backlog of classics, those will be slowly added to Game Pass over time.
Unfortunately, we do not know what classic Call of Duty titles Microsoft plans to bring over first, nor do we know how long it will take to get all the games on there. Many still have a lot of love for the original Modern Warfare & Black Ops titles, and more recently, Infinite Warfare has also received a bump in interest. No matter where Microsoft starts with this slow rollout, there will be no way to please all fans all at once.
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KitGuru Says: Personally, I would have preferred a big drop of classic COD titles on Game Pass, even if it meant that Black Ops 6 didn't land on the service on day-one. It might make less sense on the console side, but I think such a drop would bring a significant boost to PC Game Pass subscriptions.