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With Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 almost upon us (or already upon us depending on your geographical location), analysts have been weighing in on the impact it’s likely to have on Xbox Game Pass, with some reckoning it could bring as many as 4m new members to Microsoft’s subscription service, albeit at a cost of up to 6m sales.
Black Ops 6 will, of course, be the first Call of Duty title to launch day one on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, the move marking a critical test for Microsoft’s subscription service strategy following its $69bn USD acquisition of Activision Blizzard last year.
And Black Ops 6’s Game Pass launch will lead to a significant surge of new subscribers according to analysts interviewed by GamesIndustry.biz, albeit at the expense of game sales. Wedbush Securities managing director Michael Pachter, for instance, believes Microsoft will see between three and four million new members following Black Op 6’s Game Pass launch, although he reckons the move could result in up to 6m lost sales, based on the idea 25 percent of Game Pass subscribers may have bought the game anyway.
Ampere’s head games analyst Piers Harding-Rolls, meanwhile, was slightly less optimistic about Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s Game Pass allure, telling GamesIndustry.biz its introduction will likely only result in a 10 percent subscriber boost to Game Pass Ultimate – equating to approximately 2.5m members – while noting not all of those will be completely new users, given some will be upgrading from lower Game Pass tiers.
“Microsoft will be trading premium full-game sales in exchange for a bigger audience that can be monetised in-game instead,” he continued, adding, “Call of Duty is increasingly a live-service game first and foremost that monetises strongly in-game”. This fact alone, he noted, raises questions about “how [Black Ops 6 will be] monetised and whether there is a bigger onus on in-game monetisation compared to previous entries in the franchise.”
“Nobody knows what Microsoft’s expectations are for Game Pass growth past launch,” Katan Games’ Dr Serkan Toto added, “but if Black Ops 6 does not meet targets, things can become very grim very quickly. I also wonder if Black Ops 6 will be able to retain subscribers in the long run or if numbers will drop sharply again early next year, after the initial hype runs out.”
And as for how Black Ops 6’s Game Pass launch might impact PlayStation, given Sony has traditionally positioned itself as the primary place to play Call of Duty through its previous marketing and exclusivity deals with Activision Blizzard, Harding-Rolls doubts the “longer-term audience on PlayStation will be significantly disrupted”.
“Those who own both Xbox and PlayStation consoles may be swayed to play the game on Microsoft’s devices,” he explained, “but cross-platform play and multi-platform accounts mean this is not necessarily a permanent decision”.
Expect Microsoft to be trumpeting numbers loudly if Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 proves to be the Game Pass success it’s hoping for. The company most recently shared membership figures back in February – for the first time since 2022 – reporting 34m “fully paid” subscribers, up from the 25m members announced previously. As for Black Ops 6 itself, the most interesting thing to come out of its launch so far is that some of its characters are inadvertently turning blue.