In the first-person shooter genre, we can all state with a fair degree of certainty that Battlefield 6 is the game to beat — and this week, we’ll find out if that’s actually doable, since Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 arrives on Xbox’s Game Pass service along with five other titles.
All updates will be made available over November 11th through 14th, although not every one of them for every subscriber out there (see the bottom part of this article for details).
We can all say publisher Activision Blizzard King — now a Microsoft first party property — has a tall order to obey: this last week, EA’s Battlefield 6 reached 10 million copies sold, and while that number does not directly impact Call of Duty’s player base in the US, it is important to note that Activision’s title has a headstart on that count: its unified launcher strategy counts players from both Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty: Warzone, so EA’s gaining ground on a 3-against-1 fight.
Meanwhile, Game Pass will have a handful of titles to be included on its services, besides Black Ops 7, of course. Here’s a full breakdown:
Xbox Game Pass Updates (Nov.11-14)
- Great God Grove (Cloud/PC/Xbox Series X) – November 11
- Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (Cloud/Console/PC) – November 11
- Pigeon Simulator (Cloud/PC/Xbox Series X) – November 11
- Relic Hunters Legend (Cloud/Console/PC) – November 12
- Winter Burrow (Cloud/Console/PC) – November 12
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 (Cloud/Console/PC) – November 14
If you want Black Ops 7 on Game Pass, you’ll have to be an Ultimate tier subscriber
While the above is a fine selection of titles, it is pretty obvious that the Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 release is the main course for Xbox’s service this week. And because of that, Microsoft is playing its cards defensively, not enabling the new game for every subscriber.
Oh, no. In order to secure your Black Ops 7 Game Pass download, you must be an Ultimate tier subscriber — that’s the most expensive tier plan, as you’d know if you read our explainer. Good thing is, there are easy ways of purchasing that pretty much everywhere…
The reason for that is anybody’s guess, but Microsoft’s recent shift into securing the largest amount of revenue in the shortest time possible (in part, to recoup the nearly $70 billion spent on the Activision purchase) — same one that has brought us layoffs, cancelled titles and everything in between — might have something to do with it.
