Black Ops 6 is crucial to Game Pass strategy | Opinion

It's been just over a year since Microsoft broke industry records with its $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard – and next week, this incredibly expensive deal faces its most important test yet.

The launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be an important data point for both Microsoft itself and outside observers as they try to figure out the value of the deal and the type of strategy we're likely to see from it coming years. That's because Black Ops 6 will be available to premium-tier Game Pass subscribers at launch – a major coup for Game Pass, but one whose costs and benefits are still difficult to predict.

This launch is a milestone in Microsoft's grand experiment of integrating Activision Blizzard and its catalog

It's not unfair to say that Call of Duty was the Activision IP that Microsoft most wanted to acquire; It was this franchise that justified this extraordinary purchase price, to the extent that it can be justified at all.

However, owning Call of Duty has actually put the company in a strange position, as it now owns a huge franchise that generates a very large portion of its revenue on PlayStation. Fears that Microsoft might make the franchise Xbox exclusive were never realistic; Even if Xbox leadership wanted it, cutting the revenue potential of a new subsidiary acquired at such a high price would never get through to Microsoft's top management.

Sony's major fears and the reason Sony pushed competition authorities to block the takeover were somewhat more nuanced; There were fears that Call of Duty would be a Game Pass exclusive as a subscription title, which tilted the competitive landscape as Microsoft was able to point out that people who pay $70 for the game on the PlayStation would get it instead. could play for free on Game Pass.

That's exactly what happened – and now it's time to conduct the experiment and test the theory. The performance of this launch, and in particular the impact that Game Pass's day-to-day availability has on sales on other platforms, will be closely watched by both Microsoft itself and its competitors.

Getting to the point where you can feel comfortable releasing Black Ops 6 on Game Pass day and night will require some strategic realignment on Microsoft's part, with the balancing act it performs being quite public at times. Call of Duty has a big role to play in Game Pass in order to grow the subscription service, which is seen as a crucial measure of the success of the entire gaming business. However, it also needs Call of Duty to make a ton of money, as it always does, as Xbox still has a $75 billion IOU on Microsoft's coffers and can't afford to match the earning potential of Sacrificing Activision's current largest intellectual property at the altar of Xbox's long-term growth.

As a result, there were price increases and Game Pass tier realignments before release. Xbox players will need to be at the most expensive $19.99 per month tier to get CoD on launch day, although it will still be available at the $11.99 tier on PC, presumably a concession to one more price sensitive market. Microsoft has also suspended the 14-day, $1 Game Pass trial it normally runs, although this isn't a new strategy – it did the same before the release of Starfield and will presumably use this as a policy for important days – and take over night games. Date also starts in the future.

However, restoring balance was a difficult task; It was unpopular with consumers (of course) and was arguably a risky move at a time when Game Pass's growth appears to be struggling to get past a plateau. However, if CoD is to be a Game Pass title, the company must be convinced that Game Pass is an attractive option for fans of the franchise without risking declining launch revenue for the game. I'm not sure that's actually a balance that can be successfully struck, and I suspect that some internal discussions about whether CoD should even appear on Game Pass day-to-day were quite heated, but there was no real choice here – Without the ability to use this IP to push Game Pass, the entire value of the Activision Blizzard acquisition for Xbox would be called into question.

So we end up with a kind of halfway compromise solution. Black Ops 6 is heading to Game Pass on day one, a coup for the service; However, only at the most expensive level and only after a price increase for the service.

If acquiring exclusive subscription availability for one of the industry's biggest franchises on launch day can't tip the scales for Game Pass, it raises some questions about Game Pass's content strategy

If a lot of people sign up to play the game for a month and then cancel, that still ends up resulting in a significant loss of gaming revenue, which is undoubtedly a big one for some people involved in planning this release fear is. Meanwhile, there's a good chance that the lion's share of the game's sales will come on the PlayStation 5 – sales that will be very welcome to the bottom line of Microsoft's gaming business, but which Sony will also get a nice chunk of.

Another hard-to-calculate cost is that Black Ops 6 will likely release without the marketing support and partnership revenue that the franchise traditionally receives from Sony. Depending on how the Game Pass situation develops – how many new subscriptions are created as a result and how long these new customers remain subscribed – it remains at least partially possible that Sony will end up being the company that enjoys the most black numbers in its finances as a result Release, which is a bit of a minor thing in what should be a triumphant moment for Xbox.

Part of the problem is that the strategy around Activision Blizzard's content on both Xbox and Game Pass has taken shape very, very slowly over the past year, and has been quite strange in the forms it has eventually taken.

Looking through Game Pass today, there's no indication at all that Microsoft spent $75 billion buying a major publisher to bolster that service. By my count, only three Activision Blizzard games have made it to Game Pass; only one of them is a Call of Duty title. I was honestly surprised to find out that the CoD back catalog isn't at the top – this feels like incredibly low-hanging fruit, with the release of older games (even just their single-player campaigns) on Game Pass A fairly obvious way to do this is to generate interest and excitement in advance of the big “event” that is the Game Pass launch of Black Ops 6. “Get ready for Black Ops 6 by subscribing to Game Pass and playing through the old campaigns” is a straightforward and engaging message, and it's downright strange that it didn't happen.

Today's review of Game Pass gives no indication that Microsoft spent $75 billion to buy a major publisher

Of course, all of these concerns will go away if Black Ops 6 can truly trigger a huge surge in Game Pass sign-ups – and then sustain those subscriptions for at least a few months. If not – if seizing the availability of an exclusive subscription to one of the industry's biggest franchises on launch day can't move Game Pass enough to change the sales pattern for the game at least a little – then it will lead to us asking some questions about it Game Pass's content strategy comes to the forefront, something that has become increasingly difficult to ignore over the last year or two.

In any case, this launch is a milestone in Microsoft's grand experiment of integrating Activision Blizzard and its catalog. How Black Ops 6 performs next week – and on which platforms that performance is strongest – will play an important role in setting the tone for Microsoft's overall gaming strategy for years to come.