As the Activision Blizzard acquisition nears completion, Microsoft plans to add games such as Call of Duty to the Xbox Game Pass.

 

 

As soon as they announced their ‘deal of the year’, we immediately started speculating what this would mean for Xbox Game Pass. Given its popularity, it’s pretty much a certainty that Activision games will be included in the Xbox subscription service if the acquisition goes through, and in a post on Microsoft’s website, Xbox chief Phil Spencer has stated as much. He said that the company wanted to make “Activision Blizzard’s popular library of games” available on Xbox Game Pass to make them accessible to a broader audience.

However, Spencer was a little vaguer when it came to naming specific games, saying only that Call of Duty, Diablo and Overwatch could be coming to Game Pass.

That’s still good news for Xbox-owning fans of those franchises, but it doesn’t provide details that many have eagerly awaited, such as how long it will take for Call of Duty to make it to Game Pass or what other games we can expect to see. There is also the question of whether other Activision Blizzard franchises that were not mentioned, such as Warcraft, StarCraft, Crash Bandicoot, etc., are also expected.

 

 

 

 

Then again, these are probably questions that can’t be answered in any more detail until the acquisition is finalised, and again, whether that happens depends on whether the regulators approve the deal. One possible hurdle is that the purchase of Activision and its library of major IPs will also mean Xbox Game Pass exclusivity, significantly limiting the ability of Sony and others to compete with Microsoft, which the games market needs to remain healthy.

Spencer, for his part, is not particularly concerned: in his message, he stressed that Microsoft is aware of these potential problems and is working to avoid them.

Just as Microsoft has continued to support Minecraft on multiple platforms following its acquisition of Mojang, he said it would do the same for franchises with audiences outside of Xbox. This includes a “commitment to make the same version of Call of Duty available on PlayStation on the same day the game is released elsewhere”.

Regarding the Activision Blizzard acquisition, Spencer said that Microsoft intends to “pursue a principled path” and concluded by saying that the company will continue to work with regulators to ensure that the acquisition ultimately “benefits the industry and gamers”. Hopefully, things will move in that direction, and Xbox Game Pass subscribers can play Activision games without worry.

Source: Microsoft