Microsoft Won't Revive Activision Blizzard Games For Game Pass If It's A Cash Grab

For years, Microsoft employees have enjoyed a perk that gives them free subscriptions to Game Pass Ultimate, and that benefit was on track to be discontinued until Xbox boss Phil Spencer stepped in and saved the day.

Most Microsoft employees will soon lose access to a perk of the job that offers them a free Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella now has one less milestone to worry about when it comes to his performance-based pay, as the company has dropped growth targets from the metrics used to determine his compensation. Although a LinkedIn post from September indicated that Game Pass may have over 30 million subscribers, this seemingly still falls short of the number of players the gaming giant had hoped to attract to its subscription service.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3’s release is fast approaching, and soon, players will be able to dive into the newest entry to the storied shooter franchise and all its new features, story, and content. If they can afford it because, well, games are pretty expensive nowadays.

For gamers, one of the most alluring possibilities created by Microsoft's finally-completed acquisition of Activision Blizzard is the prospect of games like Call of Duty, Diablo, and Overwatch on Game Pass. Microsoft's subscription service is already a hell of a deal, and adding annualized iterations of Call of Duty plus everything Blizzard does makes it even more attractive. And it will no doubt happen eventually, but not anytime soon: Activision said last week that its games won't arrive on Game Pass until 2024 at the earliest, and in a recent interview with the Official Xbox Podcast, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said that timeline is «accurate.»

There’s been plenty of excitement over Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. We’ve been watching the back and forth on this purchase for what felt like ages. Microsoft had to appease the different regulators to ensure they could proceed with this purchase. However, it wasn’t until recently that the company received the last approval required to go forward. The CMA gave the thumbs up, and now Activision Blizzard’s merger deal is finalized, and the massive names in the video game industry are now under the control of Microsoft. With that said, there were plenty of rumors and speculation that we would start seeing some games like the Call of Duty franchise on Xbox Game Pass. That’s not going to be the case for a little while.

Call of Duty and other Activision Blizzard games won't appear on Xbox Game Pass until next year. On the Official Xbox Podcast, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer claimed that players wouldn't be seeing a big drop of those titles immediately, due to the lengthy regulatory challenges the company faced in its buyout attempt. Since it was uncertain whether the acquisition would be approved by Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) until recently, Xbox wasn't able to do the groundwork for adding the catalogue to their gaming subscription service. Ahead of the deal's closure, Activision Blizzard confirmed on Twitter that the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and newly-launched Diablo IV won't be coming to Game Pass soon, but Spencer's statement covers older titles as well.

With Activision Blizzard officially part of Xbox, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has discussed some plans for the future in a recent Xbox podcast. He confirmed that no titles from the publisher would come to Game Pass this year, though 2024 is more reasonable, and the era of exclusive betas and skins for Call of Duty on other platforms is over.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has explained the delay in getting Activision Blizzard's back catalogue added to Xbox Game Pass, and blamed the hold-up on the lengthy and difficult process of sealing the deal.

So, Xbox owns Activision-Blizzard now, right? So why are Call of Duty and Diablo not on Game Pass yet? That's been a question on many people's minds lately now that Xbox's massive acquisition has finally closed. And today, Xbox head Phil Spencer showed up on the Official Xbox Podcast to try and answer it.

Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard surely hit its fair share of roadblocks in the approval process, but at long last, the deal was formally closed last week, with Microsoft officially welcoming Activision Blizzard King to Xbox. A deal of this magnitude is obviously going to have a significant impact on the industry for years to come, but where the immediate future is concerned, many will be hoping to see games in the Activision Blizzard back catalog being added to the Game Pass catalog.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said players shouldn’t expect the company to start adding Activision Blizzard titles to Game Pass soon.