Thus far, only one Activision Blizzard-published game has made its way to Xbox’s Game Pass subscription service, almost a year after Microsoft finalised its deal to purchase the massive Call of Duty publisher. But a new report claims more Activision games will (slowly) start coming to the service in the near future.
In January 2023, Xbox announced its plans to purchase Activision Blizzard King for a total of $US69 billion, the largest video game industry acquisition in history. It took almost a year of court proceedings and hearings around the world before Microsoft was able to officially consume the publisher on October 13, 2023. Now that the deal is finalized, Xbox owns a ton of franchises and games, including Call of Duty, Warcraft, and Candy Crush. But so far, eight months after the deal was completed, only one Activision game—Diablo IV—has made its way onto Game Pass. However, it appears more are finally on the way.
According to a report by Windows Central on July 3, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is set to arrive on Game Pass in August. The N. Sane Trilogy is a remake of the first three original Crash Bandicoot games and was released in 2017 to critical acclaim and big sales.
It’s also rumoured, but not confirmed by the outlet, that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 and the Spyro Reignited Trilogy are also planned to arrive on Game Pass after Crash, possibly later this year.
When will Call of Duty games land on Game Pass?
While I’m not a fan of the video game industry cannibalising itself—which often leads to less competition and more redundancies—at the very least, it would be nice to get some free games out of it. So it’s nice to see that finally, after nearly a year, more Activision titles beyond Diablo IV will be arriving on Game Pass.
The big question I have is: When will Xbox bring all of the Call of Duty games to Game Pass? Most of the franchise is already playable on Xbox Series X|S, assuming you own the games, so it’s just a matter of Microsoft flipping the switch and making those games available to subscribers. I assume that as we get closer to the launch of Black Ops 6 on October 25—a game that is arriving on day one on Game Pass—we’ll start to see some older CoDs arrive on the service.
For now, though, it seems like Xbox is taking its time bringing the Activision back catalogue to Game Pass. This is a big departure from how it handled Bethesda’s library of games after acquiring the Fallout publisher in 2021. It couldn’t wait to get Bethesda’s games on the platform. They were on Game Pass so fast it made people’s heads spin, and it makes the lack of similar urgency around its newly-minted Activision gear all the more intriguing.
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