What you need to know
- Last week, we corroborated reports that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is Xbox Game Pass bound for July.
- Now, Microsoft has confirmed that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2023’s flagship CoD) is now coming to Xbox Game Pass on July 24, 2024.
- This will give users a taste of the Call of Duty experience ahead of Call of Duty Black Ops 6, which will be the first Call of Duty to drop straight into the subscription service.
If you ever looked at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and thought “wow, $70 is too much,” well this news is for you.
Last week, we corroborated reports that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 from last year would be hitting Xbox Game Pass this July. Microsoft’s all-you-can-eat gaming subscription service has been on a good run this summer, dropping excellent titles like Dungeons of Hinterberg and Kunitsu-gami: Path of the Goddess into the library. With Call of Duty hitting the service, July 2024 could prove one of the service’s biggest months for growth, maybe ever.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 comprises the standard modern Call of Duty experience, with campaign, zombie horde modes, and its much-loved multiplayer experiences. The game’s price has rarely come down from its standard $70 price point, as is typical for Activision games. There’s a large cohort of users in Xbox Game Pass who will likely be trying it out for the first time now, giving Modern Warfare 3 a big boost.
The game has had various high-profile seasonal cross-overs of late, including recent features with Fallout, The Boys TV show, and WWE wrestlers.
Dropping Call of Duty in early could serve as something of a test run for Microsoft, who have invested a lot in integrating the Call of Duty HQ app into the Xbox Game Pass system. Going in without a full-bore without a proper test when Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launches later this year probably wouldn’t have been the smartest thing to do.
Unfortunately, though, it seems Xbox Cloud Gaming is going to be left out of the fun. Per Microsoft’s Activision-Blizzard acquisition agreements with the UK regulator CMA, Ubisoft owns the rights to where Activision-Blizzard games appear in the cloud, sadly. This is why we have yet to see Diablo IV hit a cloud service, despite its popularity on console and PC, and despite how obviously great it would be on mobile devices.
RELATED: What’s next for Xbox Game Pass?
Still, getting Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III onto Xbox Game Pass early gives us a taste of what the future of Activision-Blizzard titles will be like for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate users, who now get new games day and date exclusively since Microsoft’s recent Xbox Game Pass changes.
