Game Pass subscribers may have to prepare to pay for this year’s Call of Duty like PS5 owners, if off-the-cuff comments made by Windows Central reporter Jez Corden come to fruition.
Microsoft obliterated sales of the FPS on its own platform by adding the previous two entries to its subscription service day one.
But according to Corden, this decision is being re-evaluated by the Team in Green.
He said during a livestream, which has since been picked up by various aggregators on social media:
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“If they take Call of Duty out of Game Pass this year, which is a possibility from what I’ve heard, it’ll reveal some of the cracks in the strategy.”
Microsoft went hard on Game Pass this generation, inflicting immense pressure on Sony to follow suit.
To its credit, the Japanese giant resisted the temptation to adopt the model, iterating on multiple occasions that it felt putting its own first-party games in PS Plus was “unsustainable”.
It’s estimated that Microsoft squandered $300 million including Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 in Game Pass, while sales of the most recent game slumped to a 17-year low.
Xbox, meanwhile, announced a remarkable 50% price hike to Game Pass last October, making its flagship Ultimate tier an eye-watering $29.99 per month.
If Call of Duty is ejected from the service, we doubt prices will go down. And like Corden himself admits, it’d be a reminder that the maths never really made sense for the model – regardless of what executives reiterated over the years.