On the latest episode of the official Xbox podcast, Microsoft’s Phil Spencer said that Activision Blizzard titles can’t come to Xbox Game Pass until 2024 because the regulatory process for the acquisition dragged on for so long.
“It’s been a long journey,” he said.
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Spencer said that the next step was to see where the games were at. He’s flying to Stockholm this week to visit the King development teams behind the Candy Crush games, after which he’d visit southern California to meet with the Activision and Blizzard teams.
“I want to go in,” he said, “I want to listen. I want to learn. I want to hear what they’re passionate about, their feedback, their energy. It’s a big moment. It’s a big moment for us. A lot of opportunity, and I’m incredibly excited by it all.”
But the big question, of course, is when Xbox fans are going to see Activision Blizzard’s games on Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass, and Game Pass Ultimate. After all, there was a “fairly immediate” drop of back catalog games when Microsoft acquired Bethesda in 2021. What’s happening with Microsoft’s latest acquisition?
“Frankly, there was a lot of uncertainty in that process up until really a week before we closed, or the week of, when the CMA [the UK Competition and Markets Authority] finally came down to their decision, that we weren’t able to get in and work with, mostly, Activision and Blizzard on that back catalog work,” he answered. “So now that the deal is closed, we’re starting that work. But there is work.”
When asked about an Activision statement on Twitter that discussed 2024 for the first Game Pass releases, Spencer confirmed that.
“I think that’s accurate,” he said. “I would love it if there was some kind of secret celebration drop that’s coming in the next couple of weeks. There’s not. Definitely, when we think about the new games that are there, I would be straight with people. If we were going to put them in the subscription this year, I would tell people. And I know there’ll be some disappointment about that. This acquisition is definitely long-term. So the fact that we’re not hitting day one with a bunch of games dropping into Game Pass is a little bit of a downer, but I’m very excited about the future. And I just want to be straight with people that that’s where we are.”
Spencer was also asked about Call of Duty and his nemesis, Sony, and its faux concerns about those games being purposefully undermined on PlayStation.
“For Call of Duty players on PlayStation, and in the future, on Nintendo, I want you to feel 100 percent part of the community,” he said. “I don’t want you to feel like there’s content you’re missing out, there’s skins you’re missing out on, there’s timing that you’re missing out on. That’s not the goal. The goal is 100 percent parity across all platforms as much as we can for launch and content. I say as much as we can on parity because clearly some platforms have resolution and frame rate differences just based on performance. But there’s nothing else. We have no goal of somehow trying to use Call of Duty to get you to buy an Xbox console. So I want the Call of Duty nation to feel supported across all platforms. We’ve been on the other side of some of those skins and times—even this beta wasn’t on Xbox the first week—[and] I just think that helps the community. I don’t think that helps the game. And so it’s the focus, if you’re a PlayStation player, you’re Nintendo player, or PC player, or an Xbox console player, I want you to feel like 100 percent part of the Call of Duty Nation.”