Activision Blizzard games to start hitting Xbox Game Pass in 2024 if Microsoft deal closes

Activision Blizzard says its games won’t begin to come to Xbox Game Pass until 2024 should Microsoft’s pending acquisition of the company go through.

The Call of Duty maker made the statement on its official X (Twitter) account in response to questions about when games like year’s Diablo IV and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III might arrive on Game Pass.

It’s awesome to see anticipation building for Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® III. As we continue to work toward regulatory approval of the Microsoft deal, we’ve been getting some questions whether our upcoming and recently launched games will be available via Game Pass.

While we…

— Activision Blizzard (@ATVI_AB) October 9, 2023

While Activision Blizzard doesn’t specifically say that those two titles will land on Game Pass in 2024, it says it’s planning to “begin adding games into Game Pass sometime in the course of next year.” Besides Call of Duty and Diablo, Activision Blizzard games include Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon and Candy Crush.

People have been speculating what the Activision Blizzard timeline for bringing games to Game Pass and have even been looking at what Microsoft did with Bethesda’s titles on Game Pass once it acquired parent company ZeniMax in March 2021. For context, Microsoft closed that deal on March 9th and quickly brought 20 Bethesda titles to Game Pass just three days later.

However, these were all older titles from at least a few years prior and, therefore, comparatively not as recent as Diablo IV and Modern Warfare III. Further, there wasn’t any guarantee that Microsoft would follow a similar Game Pass release strategy for Activision Blizzard.

Instead, the bigger revelation from this statement, arguably, is that it suggests Microsoft’s closure of the deal is imminent, as noted by business lawyer Richard Hoeg. Last week, documents revealed that the company aimes to complete the acquisition on October 13th. This comes after a prolonged 20-month process that included signing 10-year licensing deals with Nintendo and PlayStation, battling the FTC and divesting Activision Blizzard cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft.

Source: Activision Blizzard