Phil Spencer confirms that Activision Blizzard games will not appear in Game Pass this year

After the closing of the deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, fans expected many new games to appear in the Game Pass service, but this will not happen until at least 2024. This was confirmed by Phil Spencer himself in his Xbox podcast.

Earlier, Activision Blizzard made an official statement that neither Diablo IV nor Call of Duty Modern Warfare III will appear in Game Pass this year, but players still expected the company’s older games to appear in Game Pass, but they will have to wait for them as well.

The regulatory process took so long that we were unable to start working with Activision Blizzard on the preliminary catalog. Now that the deal is closed, we are starting this work, but there is a lot of it. I think Activision tweeted something about 2024, and I think that’s more accurate. I’d love it if there was some kind of secret celebration over the next few weeks, but that’s not going to happen.

Expectations that the company’s old games would be available via subscription were raised, among other things, by Microsoft’s previous experience when they added a large catalog of Bethesda games two days after the acquisition deal was closed, but unfortunately, this time it didn’t work out that way.