Microsoft Wanted To Snag A Baldur's Gate 3 Game Pass Deal For Just $5 Million

Activision-Blizzard has said that it expects that it will start adding games to Game Pass sometime in the course of 2024.

Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft publisher Activision Blizzard might be coming to a particularly spooky conclusion. Sources close to the deal have told The Verge that the long, knock-down drag-out process might conclude on Friday October 13.

Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass has proven to be quite a hit for Xbox players. This subscription service was introduced to allow players access to a wide range of video games at their disposal. For the past several years, we’ve seen the service evolve with cloud gaming first-party exclusives launching day one on the service, among several deals that brought in third-party video game titles to the service. However, don’t anticipate Microsoft to make a game that would only be accessible through Xbox Game Pass.

Microsoft seem to be dropping hints that Call of Duty games are coming to Game Pass. But is everyone jumping the gun on this one?

Game Pass has become central to Microsoft’s gaming efforts ever since its introduction, driving the company to a much more platform agnostic approach. Interestingly enough, however, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan doesn’t seem to be a big fan.

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it was raising the subscription prices for Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate in all markets except the US, Japan, Chile, Brazil, and Columbia, and as many may have expected, it looks like it won’t be the only price hike we’ll see for Microsoft’s subscription service.

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer attended Tokyo Game Show 2023 in person to meet with fans and press alike. Japanese website Game Watch published a new interview with the executive just a few hours ago, and the conversation provides several tidbits worth reporting.

As Microsoft marches toward a new deadline for its planned acquisition of Activision, the company stumbled into an unexpected setback of its own making.

The video game industry revolves around secrets — it often feels like everything about a game in development is closely guarded. It’s a far cry from the literary world, where books are announced and detailed in trade publications well ahead of publication, or in entertainment, where casting news trickles out over a course of years. Video game creation, design, production, and distribution comprise a volatile, ever-shifting process, and for the companies behind the biggest games, too much transparency would dissolve carefully crafted exterior narratives. That’s why it was such a huge deal when Microsoft accidentally uploaded non-public documents to a California court’s file repository last week.

The success of Baldur’s Gate 3 came as a surprise to many people. This includes developer Larian Studios, with concurrent player counts surpassing 800,000 players on Steam. It also seemed to surprise another big name in the industry, Microsoft.

Microsoft has recently suffered perhaps its biggest ever leak in the games industry, having accidentally uploaded unredacted documents as part of its legal proceedings with the FTC. In the process, several new details have emerged, including the company’s plans to release a cloud hybrid next-gen Xbox console in 2028, a mid-gen Xbox Series X refresh that’s apparently in the works, a new Xbox controller that will have haptic feedback, Bethesda’s whole slate of upcoming titles, and more.

Leaked Microsoft documents have revealed the estimated costs of putting third-party games on Xbox Game Pass.