Microsoft’s Game Pass strategy around Call of Duty is getting clearer — and also, somehow, more confusing.
According to Polygon, Microsoft has confirmed that future Call of Duty releases will not arrive on Xbox Game Pass immediately at launch. Instead, new entries are expected to come to the service around a year after release. That update came alongside a Game Pass price decrease, which sounds nice on paper, but for COD fans, it also changes the expectation many players had after Microsoft moved to acquire Activision Blizzard.
Remember, Microsoft announced its plan to buy Activision Blizzard in 2022, in a massive USD 68.7 billion deal. For a lot of people, Call of Duty was the crown jewel. The logic seemed simple: Microsoft owns Xbox, Xbox pushes Game Pass, and COD is one of gaming’s biggest franchises. So surely Game Pass would become the ultimate Call of Duty library, right?
Not quite.
At the moment, Polygon notes that only six Call of Duty games are available through Game Pass. That leaves 15 titles still missing from the subscription library, including some proper fan-favourite campaigns and weird-but-interesting entries.
For Malaysian and SEA players, this matters because Game Pass is usually sold as the “save money, play more” option. A lot of us don’t buy every premium shooter at launch, especially when multiplayer communities move fast and older campaigns can still be worth playing years later. If you’re mainly interested in story mode, zombies, or just revisiting classics, Game Pass should be the perfect place to catch up without dropping full price on old titles.
The missing games are not small filler entries either. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, released in 2016, took the series into space and had Kit Harington in its cast. Black Ops Cold War delivered a very loud, very 80s-style campaign during 2020. And 2007’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare remains one of the defining FPS campaigns ever, thanks to missions like “All Ghillied Up” and its unforgettable Chernobyl opening mood.
The annoying part is that many of these games can still be bought separately on modern platforms, and some are often discounted. But subscription-era gaming has trained everyone to hesitate. Nobody wants to buy a game today, then see it added to Game Pass next month. That feeling is extra real in Malaysia, where players are already juggling Steam sales, console subscriptions, mobile top-ups, and hardware upgrades.
So the day-one question is only half the story. Sure, newer Call of Duty titles coming later to Game Pass is a shift from what some Xbox fans expected. But if Microsoft is not putting the latest COD there immediately, then the older catalogue becomes even more important. That back catalogue is exactly the kind of value that could make Game Pass feel stronger for players who missed certain entries or want to replay campaigns without hunting for discs or separate digital purchases.
For now, the situation feels incomplete. Microsoft owns the franchise, Game Pass needs strong reasons for people to stay subscribed, and Call of Duty has decades of content sitting there. If the newest games are going to wait, then bro, at least open the vault properly.
Source: Polygon