85%
Highly Likely
Earlier this week, Xbox's new chief executive officer, Asha Sharma, took the first of what we'd later learn would be a couple of big swings with how the Xbox brand is evolving under her purview by decreasing the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and confirming that brand-new Call of Duty games will not launch directly into Game Pass anymore. But a new report claims that there will be more than enough of the long-running military shooter to go around.
A report from PC Gamer claims that we'll start seeing older titles from the franchise make their way onto Xbox Game Pass while the latest titles remain outside of the service. And no, this doesn't just mean we'll have 2024's Black Ops 6 to play through Game Pass while we wait for 2026's Call of Duty, for example. We're talking about potentially going back to the beginning of the franchise and bringing back some of the oldest titles.
Right now, not including Warzone, which doesn't really count when we're talking about mainline entries, there are six Call of Duty games available within Game Pass:
- CoD: Modern Warfare (2019)
- CoD: Modern Warfare II
- CoD: Modern Warfare III
- CoD: WWII
- CoD: Black Ops 6
- CoD: Black Ops 7
The oldest of these games is Call of Duty: WWII, which initially launched in 2017. There are more than a dozen Call of Duty games, then, that could be making their way onto Game Pass to help fill the gap left by not having the most recent entry join the service right away.
- Call of Duty (2003)
- Call of Duty 2 (2005)
- Call of Duty 3 (2006)
- CoD 4: Modern Warfare (2007)
- CoD: World at War (2008)
- CoD: Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
- CoD: Black Ops (2010)
- CoD: Modern Warfare 3 (2011)
- CoD: Black Ops 2 (2012)
- CoD: Ghosts (2013)
- CoD: Advanced Warfare (2014)
- CoD: Black Ops 3 (2015)
- CoD: Infinite Warfare (2016)
- CoD: Vanguard (2021)
Of course, it's unlikely that we'll just start to see every old Call of Duty title join the service, and if the goal really is to try and offer an older flavour of the long-running military shooter franchise, then it feels more likely that the first few retro games we'd see from the series join Game Pass would be those first three entries.
Especially since once you get to the first Modern Warfare, everything starts to feel more like how things are today, since you can trace much of the modern Call of Duty feel back to when 2007's Modern Warfare exploded Call of Duty into the juggernaut franchise it is today.
It's also worth considering how much gap-filling putting these older titles onto the service would do. If people want the new hotness, they're probably not going to spend their time with a game that's over two decades old, they'd likely just buy the latest game instead. It's also worth mentioning that anyone who got used to not buying the latest CoD because it would come with their Game Pass Ultimate subscription could still just wait a year to see it come to Game Pass.
But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be worthwhile to see some of these older titles join Game Pass. It's doubtful that someone out there is clamouring to play CoD: Ghosts, but in the same way that veteran DOOM fans appreciate all the different versions of that iconic shooter being available in Game Pass, there are surely Call of Duty fans who would appreciate being able to go back and play the campaigns of Call of Duty 1-3.
At the very least it would be a big value addition to Game Pass, and Xbox would be making better use of the portfolio of titles it spent nearly $70 billion to acquire.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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