Today Activision Blizzard shed some light on its plans for its games on Xbox Game Pass in light of the acquisition by Microsoft, which appears increasingly probable.
The announcement, made on X (formerly Twitter), mentions that there's no plan to release Diablo 4 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 on Game Pass this year.
Yet, after the deal closes, we should start seeing games by the publisher appear on Game Pass in 2024.
Here's the announcement in its entirety.
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 do not have plans to put Modern Warfare III or Diablo IV into Game Pass this year, once the deal closes, we expect to start working with Xbox to bring our titles to more players around the world. And we anticipate that we would begin adding games into Game Pass sometime in the course of next year.
The $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft was announced all the way back in December 2022 and has been stuck in a regulatory quagmire.
Microsoft and Activision are currently working toward consummating the deal after the British CMA issued a preliminary approval and is expected to provide a final approval soon.
In the meanwhile, the American FTC has decided to continue fighting against the acquisition, but their proceeding is very unlikely to stop it from being consummated due to procedural times.
Recently, we've also heard from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer that there's no intention to ever offer games exclusive to Game Pass.
