In the last couple of years, Microsoft has made the bet to launch Call of Duty day one on Xbox Game Pass; first with 2024's Black Ops 6 before following it up last year with Black Ops 7. However, a new rumour doing the rounds suggests that Xbox is considering reversing that decision for this year's Call of Duty game.
As discussed on a recent episode of The Xbox Two podcast, reporter Jez Corden talks about COD's place on Microsoft's subscription service. Corden goes on to ponder the thought of Xbox not launching Call of Duty 2026 day one on the service, before following up that he's heard such a move "is a possibility".
"It'll be interesting to see... if they take Call of Duty out of Game Pass this year — which is a possibility from what I've heard — I think it'll reveal some of the cracks in the strategy [with Game Pass] possibly,"
Here's where Corden talks about this in the podcast (timestamped):
Corden doesn't really elaborate any further on this topic, but it's interesting that he brings it up - especially because the question posed by a viewer wasn't directly talking about Call of Duty. Still, it's worth being wary of this information for now - we're definitely classing it as a vague rumour and it's best not taking this to the bank until we hear about it directly from Xbox.
Black Ops 7 seemingly performed pretty poorly in comparison to the prior year's Call of Duty game, with Activision subsequently confirming that we would no longer see "back-to-back" Modern Warfare or Black Ops games. This could go some way to explaining this move by Microsoft, if it turns out to be true.
We're not talking about back-to-back games this year, yet it's all-but confirmed that Call of Duty 2026 will be a new Modern Warfare game of some sort. It'll be interesting to see how an 'MW4' performs, whether it launches day one in Game Pass or not!