In a recent Bloomberg report, Microsoft has reportedly given up a potential $300 million in Call of Duty sales as a result of putting the game on Game Pass. In the report, Cecilia D’Anastasio said:
“The price hike and other changes to the Game Pass plans are a sign that Xbox’s big streaming push is still not generating the revenue it would like eight years after launch, according to interviews with seven current and former Xbox employees. The company is putting some of its top titles on the streaming service, but that’s cutting into sales of higher-margin games like Call of Duty, which came with Microsoft’s 2023 acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc., said the people, who asked to not be identified discussing internal company matters.
Xbox gave up more than $300 million in sales of Call of Duty on console and PCs last year, according to one of the former employees, who asked not to be identified discussing internal estimates.”
First of all, what did they think was going to happen? Of course, you’d lose out on potential sales with it being part of Game Pass. The idea, or so I thought, was to make up the lost revenue in a different way.
According to Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Call of Duty Black Ops 6 had the largest launch of any Call of Duty ever, thanks to Game Pass. The question at the time wasn’t how many people would play it, but whether that spilled into actual gross revenue.
Xbox gave up more than $300 million in sales of Call of Duty on console and PCs last year
Earlier this year, Call of Duty continued to dominate the sales charts as the number one highest-selling title in the United States. Later, in May, Tweaktown reported that Black Ops 6 was “the highest-grossing title in the franchise’s history.”
So, what gives? How much did Xbox really “lose” as a result of all this, and how much does it look to gain as a result of the price increase? That’s a number only Microsoft knows, and the rest of us will have to guess on it, but let’s look at some numbers, if you’ll bear with me.
Assuming Call of Duty averages its reported $1.2 billion in sales annually. We’ll use that as a starter. Now, imagine Call of Duty Black Ops 6, according to the recent report, managed to generate only $900 million in sales.
That leaves Game Pass subscribers at the forefront of making up the $300 million deficit, which they can do in multiple ways. The main way is through subscriber counts.
To reach Call of Duty, you needed to pay for the original $20 Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Assuming every single subscriber paid for this $20 as just that, and not through sales or other various VPN methods, you would need 15,000,000 subscribers to make up for the lost income.
Now, this can be spread out over several months; you don’t need 15 million subscribers in a single month. Instead, you need to do that over the course of some months to make up the difference. According to Satya, Game Pass saw the “most Game Pass subscriber adds ever seen on a launch day,” thanks to Call of Duty Black Ops 6.
The other method is through microtransactions. A potential increase in Call of Duty players, thanks to them already being subscribers to Game Pass, can lead to increased revenue through cosmetic bundles, battle passes, and other in-game offerings.
Given that Black Ops 6 had the highest recorded revenue (not profit) of any Call of Duty game ever and added the most Game Pass sign-ups, you’d think this was all good news. Well, I did too.
Then, Microsoft increased the price of Game Pass Ultimate by 50%, and will be implementing the new pricing model exactly 11 days before the launch of Black Ops 7. Coincidence? I think not.
Now, it’s clear that it’s not the only reason Game Pass Ultimate is increasing. Raising the price by $120 a year for a $70 game isn’t exactly mathing out. Somewhere, someone is unhappy with the way the numbers are coming out as a whole. Where that line falls, only Microsoft knows, but it’s clearly coming from someone at the top (cough Amy Hood cough).
Months ago, on July 5, 2025, our own Jez Corden penned the opinion that Microsoft’s Amy Hood had given, “Xbox an utterly unrealistic financial requirement that is going to continue hurting the division. This isn’t over.”
From the top down, the shift in focus from simple profit to profits that exceed a specific margin has been underway for months, if not years. After the axing of Tango Gameworks, people started wondering if the captain at the helm was still Phil Spencer, Satya Nadella, or Amy Hood. Clearly, people are no longer wondering.
Perhaps this price increase for Game Pass Ultimate is partially intended to encourage people to buy Call of Duty instead of subscribing. However, it couldn’t come at a worse time, given the massive growth in interest for the Battlefield franchise. You’d think you’d want to lower the barrier of entry with such a formidable competitor emerging.
Going back to the Bloomberg report, “Game Pass hasn’t delivered the explosive growth Microsoft anticipated post-Activision, and they’ve realized their infrastructure costs don’t align with their pricing model,” said Joost Van Dreunen, founder of the video-game analytics firm Aldora.”
The question becomes, what does explosive growth look like to Microsoft? What would finally make the executives at Microsoft happy?
If you’re reporting record growth for your service and record revenue in the history of the Call of Duty series, what more can you ask for? Apparently, a lot more. They’ve started to release a decent amount of games to the service; this year alone, they’ve added:
With Ninja Gaiden 4, Outer Worlds 2, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 still on the way. If you were to pay for all of those up front, you’re looking at a total cost of around $450, which is on par with the new pricing model of $360.
Then again, you don’t own any of them through Game Pass, which makes the surging cost even more confusing to consumers. Why pay a premium for digital rental when the same price can be paid for a full purchase? Heck, even waiting for a sale on all these could save you even less than the yearly cost of Game Pass.
Now, I know that doesn’t account for all the other games added to the service, but for the most part, a lot of people subscribe for the day one releases.
Whatever the case may be, it’s clear Microsoft wants more money for the addition of Call of Duty to the service. Be it the only reason or only part of it, there’s still a considerable weight being placed on the title and the rising cost of Game Pass.