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Microsoft broke the rules for big video game launches by announcing its most patiently anticipated new title – Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 – will be available immediately to Game Pass subscribers.

Traditionally, gamers had to shell out significant amounts of money up front to purchase major new releases outright.

With the latest release of Call of Duty, they will now have the option to pay a much smaller monthly subscription instead.

GamesIndustry.biz chief Christopher Dring told the BBC it was a “significant move” for Microsoft and the industry.

The tech giant has delivered games to Game Pass subscribers on launch day before — like 2023’s highly anticipated Starfield — but never with a release as significant as Call of Duty.

It is the fourth best-selling game series in history, surpassing 425 million lifetime sales—and making tens of billions of dollars in the process.

But instead of sticking to a tried and tested model for selling it, Microsoft is taking a new approach.

“Call of Duty is the biggest game to hit a subscription service on launch day,” Mr Dring said.

“[It}isbigtestforsubscriptionbecauseifCallofDutycan’tmovetheneedleintermsofsubscribernumbersprobablynothingwill”headded[Това}еголямоизпитаниезаабонаментазащотоакоCallofDutyнеможедапреместииглатапоотношениенаброянаабонатитевероятнонищонямадагонаправи“добавитой[It}isabigtestforsubscriptionbecauseifCallofDutycan’tmovetheneedleintermsofsubscribernumbersprobablynothingwill”headded

Game Pass, like Sony’s rival PlayStation Plus service, allows console and PC gamers to play hundreds of video games for a monthly subscription fee.

Both have been described as ‘Netflix for gaming’, but with the caveat that gamers can download many of the available games to play on their own hardware – rather than streaming through the cloud.

They are hugely popular services, with Sony saying PlayStation Plus had 47 million subscribers in March 2023, while Microsoft said Game Pass had 34 million subscribers as of February 2024.

But it does mean that unless something changes between now and Call of Duty’s launch (which still doesn’t have a release date), none of Game Pass’ 34 million subscribers will have to pay anything extra to play the new game.

This means that Microsoft is taking a huge risk, choosing to potentially cannibalize sales in exchange for – hopefully – a sharp increase in Game Pass subscribers.

Mr Dring said the move probably came down to an inherent problem with game streaming services – people simply don’t play games as much as they watch TV shows, so “it can be hard to justify” paying to play one or two titles.

But with such a big game being added to the service, he said there could still be tweaks to make the numbers work.

“It will be interesting to see if Xbox introduces higher Game Pass tiers or other monetization techniques to mitigate this,” he said.

One element that is unclear in Microsoft’s announcement is whether gamers will be able to stream the new Call of Duty game or whether they will be forced to download it.

That’s because when Microsoft bought Activision, it had to make concessions to deal with the attention of regulators around the world.

To get the deal through British regulators in particular, Microsoft agreed to give French games publisher Ubisoft the rights to distribute Activision’s games on consoles and PCs.

This means that cloud streaming rights are decided by Ubisoft – so it may not be available to stream when it launches.

It also means that the new Call of Duty game could eventually appear on competing streaming platforms.

But the specifics of the deal are unknown, and it’s highly unlikely that PlayStation gamers will be able to stream the game on release day.