LONDON: Activision Blizzard has announced that it expects to bring its titles to Xbox Game Pass as early as 2024. This news comes after Microsoft’s prediction that it will close its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard within the next week.
Activision Blizzard has stated that it does not have plans to put Modern Warfare 3 or Diablo 4 into Game Pass this year, but once the deal closes, it expects to start working with Xbox to bring its titles to more players around the world over the course of next year.
The acquisition has faced resistance from the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The FTC lost its court case against Microsoft, with the judge finding that the acquisition didn’t breach US anti-monopoly laws.
However, Microsoft still had to address concerns raised by the CMA in the UK. To satisfy the UK monopolies watchdog, Activision Blizzard committed to selling the streaming rights to its games to Ubisoft, so as to break up competition in the streaming market. This move satisfied the CMA, which went on to state that this plan “substantially addresses most concerns” that the UK organization had about the acquisition.
It is important to note that while Activision Blizzard games may well be arriving on Game Pass next year, it seems highly unlikely that the titles will be available on the Xbox Cloud Gaming service.