After many, many months of speculation and legal battles, Microsoft has officially closed on its acquisition of Activision Blizzard King. Suddenly, a whole host of games and IPs are Microsoft’s to play with. That will most certainly include adding a host of older games to its Game Pass service, at the very least some classic Call of Duty titles and who knows what else. Aside from wondering what titles might show up, the biggest question is, “When will Game Pass get this infusion of new content?”
Phil Spencer himself gave us an answer to that question by way of the Xbox podcast last week. After some rumors started about games hitting the service as soon as the deal closed, various other rumors have started spreading for different times the games could appear. When asked about it, Phil gave a response to those rumors and shined a little more light on the process. According to the interview, Microsoft was unable to do any work on bringing those games to Game Pass until the deal closed so that work has only just gotten started. Phil Spencer even directly said that he wished there was a shadow drop coming in the next few weeks but there isn’t.
Speaking of Call of Duty, one other topic on the Xbox podcast was the future of Call of Duty on Xbox and other consoles. Currently Sony has an exclusivity agreement on some in-game content that will expire next year. Phil stated that the goal and the plan is 100% parity moving forward for Call of Duty. They want there to be no difference in content or quality no matter where you choose to play the franchise. He even mentions Nintendo in the future, alongside PC and PS5, getting the same content and quality at the same time as Xbox. That is welcome news for anyone who’s ever been on the other side of the exclusive content world.
While there’s no firm timeline on Activision games making their way to Game Pass, we know that they are coming eventually and that work has already begun. It sounds like 2024 is the plan, but when exactly in 2024 is yet to be revealed. Microsoft has been pretty good about letting gamers know when exciting things are on the way so there’s no doubt that there will be an update sooner than later.
Image from: Xbox
