Microsoft could move “Call of Duty” to Game Pass in a massive subscription push

Leveling up Game Pass… The $30B “Call of Duty” franchise might see its sales numbers shrink in coming installments, and not because players are tired of war games. Microsoft will be releasing the series’ next entry on its Game Pass subscription service for Xbox and PC players, The Wall Street Journal reported. Instead of forking out $70 for CoD, gamers may be able to access the game (and 100+ others) for between $10 and $17 a month (barring price hikes). Microsoft sealed its $70B purchase of Activision Blizzard last year, and this CoD change would be a big bet to boost subs.

• Math not mathing: Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick testified last year that it didn’t make financial sense to put CoD on subscription services like Game Pass.

• Cracked: New CoD entries are released each year, selling ~25M copies each. With its current 34M Game Pass subscribers, it would take Microsoft three months to match the $1B “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II” made in its opening week.

• Expectation vs. reality: Microsoft aims to hit 100M Game Pass subscribers by the end of the decade, but its 28% growth rate in 2022 was far below its 73% target. Analysts estimate growth slowed to 13% last year.

The console woes… Microsoft hasn’t had the best time with its latest console generation. It loses about $200 on every Xbox sold, and last year the seven-year-old Nintendo Switch sold twice as many units as the newest Xbox. Sony’s PlayStation 5 is estimated to be outselling the latest Xboxes by 5x. But Sony isn’t at the level it wants to be either: the PS5 just missed a trimmed-down annual sales target.