A few days before Microsoft officially bought Activision Blizzard King, the latter said we shouldn't expect to see their new games being added to Game Pass before 2024. Now it's time for the head of Xbox to clarify things even further.
Because Phil Spencer came to visit the rebooted The Official Xbox Podcast, and spent most of this week's episode answering questions about Activision Blizzard King now being a part of Xbox Game Studios. This included the question about when we can expect to see Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, Diablo IV, Singularity, Call of Duty games and all the other great stuff in ABK's library come to Game Pass. He basically reiterated what they've been saying for a while and explaining why:
"When we finished Bethesda, there was this great moment. We were able to put a bunch of the back catalog games and celebrate their history. The truth of the matter is, with Activision Blizzard King, that the regulatory process took so long - and frankly, there was a lot of uncertainty in that process up until really a week before we closed or the week of when the CMA finally came down to their decision - that we weren't able to get in and work with the, mostly Activision and Blizzard in this case, on that back catalog work.
So now that the deal is closed, we're starting that work. But there is work. And I think the Activision Twitter handle (...) did put out something that talked about 2024. I think that's accurate. I would love it if there was some kind of secret celebration drop that's coming in the next couple of weeks. There's not. Definitely, when we think about the new games that are there, I would be straight with people. If we were going to put them in the subscription this year, I would tell people. And I know there'll be some disappointment about that."
Long story short: don't expect any major Activision Blizzard King games being added to Game Pass before 2024. Spencer is smart, however, makes makes it clear that the acquisition of ABK will benefit Xbox, PC, mobile and Cloud gamers long term:
"This acquisition is definitely long term, so the fact that we're not hitting day 1 with a bunch of games dropping in to Game Pass is a little bit of a downer, but I'm very excited about the future, and I just want to be straight with people that that's where we are."
Do you want to see basically every Activision Blizzard game added to Game Pass at once next year or spread out over a long period of time?