Xbox Acquiring Activision is Going to Be Huge for Classic Call of Duty Games and Xbox Game Pass

gamerant.com:

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard in what will amount to the largest acquisition in the history of the video game industry — assuming it goes through. There are still some hurdles that need to be cleared before Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard is approved, but if it goes through as planned, Microsoft will find itself in charge of one of the industry's biggest blockbuster franchises: Call of Duty.

Call of Duty is consistently the top-selling game each year with very few exceptions. Even when the franchise's overall sales are down, like what happened with Call of Duty: Vanguard, it still stands head and shoulders above over titles on the market. The chance to control the Call of Duty brand is likely a big reason why Microsoft made the move to acquire Activision Blizzard, besides the flood of content that the purchase will provide the Xbox Game Pass subscription service.

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When Microsoft acquired Bethesda, it made it clear that part of the reason was so it could secure content for Xbox Game Pass through the company's older games as well as its future titles which could then become day one releases. One has to imagine that the same logic applies to Microsoft's purchase of Activision, which means that Call of Duty fans will likely have a lot of reasons to sign up for Xbox Game Pass when the deal goes through.

As it so happens, nearly every main series Call of Duty game is playable on the latest Xbox consoles thanks to Xbox's backward compatibility program. This includes the very first Call of Duty game that released for Xbox 360, the critically-acclaimed Call of Duty 2, all the way to Call of Duty: