Microsoft, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is reportedly planning to make this year's new Call of Duty available on Game Pass from day one. According to the WSJ, Microsoft will officially announce the move during the showcase on May 3, the industry's customary, formerly e6-centered game launch week.

Microsoft's game subscription service has become a tentpole initiative in recent years, with the acquisition of iconic studios like Bethesda and Obsidian making old favorites and new releases available for monthly payments on pc, Xbox and mobile. It is one of the most profitable media properties to date and is undoubtedly a major factor in the71 billion cost of buying Activision Blizzard.700 Including CoD adds a lot of value (and new users) to the Game Pass.

It's also a bit of a make-or-break move, and I think it's hard to see that some of the most beloved studios squeeze in recent days, wave after wave of layoffs and studio closures under the Xbox umbrella, have come from its fresh Activ70 billion of balance sheets, Activision Blizzard-shaped holes, as well as sluggish sales of Xbox series consoles. So far, it has moved half the units of Sony's PS5, matching the pace of the last generation unprofitable Xbox One. According to The Verge, Game Pass failed to meet its subscriber growth targets in 2021 and 22 years, but a recent IGN report said subscriber growth in 2023 was slowing even further, with Game Pass essentially cannibalizing traditional sales of games offered on the service (confirmed by UK regulators as part of the ActiBlizz merger process).報告されGamesIndustry.biz

So Microsoft has a lot of incentives to put the biggest game series ever on the gaming Path: it's still in the arms for the service, with many traditional sales going through with the PS5. You can prove a huge shot at the same time. But it still strikes me as a risky bet. That cash on delivery money is a guaranteed windfall that Microsoft wants to adulterate for the success of Game Pass, and as a member of Digital Foundry pointed out in a recent podcast, it will be hard for Game Pass subscribers to return to that deal for future Cod if they have 1 CoD release on their first day.If it does not work out financially.

DAVE Oshry, head of FPS studio New Blood, said earlier this year that the price of the game once — quite reasonably, about 220-around25— but not to "devalue" the game, and more than half of those huge Steam sales you can see the same thing as how Nintendo rarely puts its games on sale — I think Mario RPG and You may not like how much you'll have to shell out for a paper Mario remake, but I can't deny that it works for publishers. Game Pass CoD could pay dividends to subscribers in the short term, but the entire service risks devaluing the entire Xbox catalog.

Then again, it could be right for Microsoft to put all its eggs in the game pass basket. If a subscription is actually the future of game delivery, building the biggest one first can lead to huge returns. But at the moment, we're not sure that the "Netflix for Games" revolution is really imminent, or, if so, good for us.