Xbox confirms Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will launch on Game Pass on day one

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be available on Xbox Game Pass on day one when it launches later this year.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on this two weeks ago, although Microsoft is only now confirming the news on the official Xbox Wire blog.

This is a major move for multiple reasons. For one, no game on the level of Call of Duty has debuted straight onto Game Pass. What’s more, no entry in the first-person shooter series has ever debuted directly onto a subscription service. To that point, The Verge has said that there was a lot of internal debate at Microsoft about whether Black Ops 6 should come to Game Pass, given that such a move could cannibalize the millions of copies that each new game sells.

That said, it’s important to note that Black Ops 6 will also launch on PS5 as part of Microsoft’s 10-year licencing agreement with Sony. Microsoft made that deal last year to help get regulatory approval for its acquisition of Call of Duty parent company Activision Blizzard. Therefore, Microsoft will be able to double-dip on Black Ops 6 whether people simply buy it outright on PS5 (or even Xbox or PC) or decide to subscribe to Game Pass to play.

In any event, it will be interesting to see what contribution, if any, this release will make toward boosting Game Pass subscribers. For years now, Microsoft has had an ambitious goal of reaching 100 million Game Pass members by 2030, but it only reached 34 million earlier this year. The company has even admitted that the service has been slow to grow. Clearly, then, the company is betting big on Call of Duty to help turn things around.

Alongside the Game Pass news, Xbox released a short live-action teaser for Black Ops 6:

The game will be revealed in full on June 9th during the Black Ops 6 Direct presentation, which takes place immediately after the Xbox Games Showcase.

Image credit: Activision

Source: Xbox