New Call of Duty games won't come to Game Pass Premium, older games still remain on middle tier

New Call of Duty games are exclusive to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for at least a year, Microsoft has announced, and some existing Call of Duty games can still be played by Premium subscribers.

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Microsoft has announced key changes with Xbox Game Pass, with new Essential and Premium tiers and Game Pass Ultimate increasing to $30 a month. Due to the timing, the hike was designed in part for Call of Duty; Microsoft is locking access to new Call of Duty games like Black Ops 7 behind the more expensive Ultimate tier.

This sets the trend for new Call of Duty game releases on Xbox Game Pass, however older Call of Duty games will remain in the Game Pass catalog to be played by mid-tier subscribers. Doing a quick search, I found that there are three mainline Call of Duty games offered on the $15 per month Xbox Game Pass Premium: WWII, and the newer Modern Warfare II and Modern Warfare III reboots. This feels like an important distinction to make, and is indicative of Microsoft's willingness to break apart premium franchises for potential long-term gain (Call of Duty is so popular that even the older games would still sell millions of copies per year, and in one year, the franchise sold 25 million games).

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"Premium subscribers get newly added fan-favorites like Diablo IV and Hogwarts Legacy starting today, and new Xbox-published games within a year of their launch (excludes Call of Duty titles)," Microsoft confirmed on the Xbox Wire.

Game Pass Premium - $15 per month

• Access to 3 older Call of Duty games (WWII, MW2, MW3), console only
• No day 1 access to Call of Duty
• New Call of Duty games not guaranteed to come to the tier at all

Game Pass Ultimate - $30 per month

• Access to 4 older Call of Duty games (WWII, MW2, MW3, Black Ops 6), console & PC
• New Call of Duty releases on day 1
• New Call of Duty games exclusive to Game Pass Ultimate for at least 1 year

Bear in mind that these are only the console versions. Xbox Game Pass Premium does not include access to Call of Duty games on PC. Conversely, Game Pass Ultimate gives access to all those games as well as Black Ops 6, and even PC versions of all of those games too.

It's worth noting that Game Pass PC will be getting future Call of Duty games day and date, including Black Ops 7. Microsoft raised the price of PC Game Pass to $16.50.

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So what does this tell us?

Black Ops 6's launch into Game Pass may not have generated as much profit as Activision and/or Microsoft had hoped. Releasing a big mainline game into a $20/month subscription service could impact full game sales, lowering the amount of upfront profit that the game could make shortly after launch.

Traditionally, Call of Duty games depended as much on frontline launch sales as they did on post-release microtransactions; Modern Warfare II, which launched before the merger was complete and did not release into Xbox Game Pass, made $1 billion from game sales alone.

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Moving the $35 billion Call of Duty franchise into Game Pass is an attempt to trade game sales for long-term monetization through Game Pass as well as microtransactions/battle passes, however it's unclear if this plan is going well.

One thing's for sure: If launching a $70 premium product in a $20 subscription service didn't go according to plan, there's no way Microsoft would launch that same content in a $15 subscription service.