A new report from The Game Business looked back on how Microsoft’s decision to put Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on Xbox Game Pass panned out, and the results are, well, mixed. On the one hand, the decision does seem to have paid off for Xbox overall. On the other hand, it doesn’t look like it really did anything for Call of Duty as a game.
When Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launched, according to player numbers that The Game Business pulled from Ampere Analysis, 33.7 million people were playing Black Ops 6. That’s a big, 13 million increase on the previous year’s abysmal Modern Warfare 3, and a smaller, but still significant 2.5 million increase from the last strong Call of Duty release with 2022’s Modern Warfare 2.
Black Ops 6 drove a large spike in Game Pass subscriptions, it had more people playing Call of Duty on Xbox devices and platforms, and even though PlayStation’s market share still towers over Xbox’s, Call of Duty coming to Game Pass was able to keep team green in the game.
Fast-forward to today, and the spike in Game Pass subscribers Call of Duty brought in has definitely helped the service, with an 11% increase in the first quarter of 2025 compared to 2024’s first quarter, according to Circana. Players stuck around to enjoy the rest of what Game Pass has to offer, which is better for Microsoft and the entire Xbox ecosystem.
Those same players who joined Game Pass to play Call of Duty have seemingly not kept playing Call of Duty. The number of players on Call of Duty who were playing on Xbox when Black Ops 6 launched dropped 10%, and the Call of Duty player base has seen a sharp decline compared to the decrease following the launch of previous Call of Duty games.
Call of Duty is still a massive game with over 20 million active players, but that player base is currently 20.6 million, according to Ampere Analysis, which sits slightly below the 20.8 million it was back in 2023.
More players than the series’ last major release were playing Black Ops 6 when it launched, and months later, Call of Duty has fewer active players than it did two years prior. Adding Call of Duty to Game Pass helped Xbox boost subscribers, but hasn’t helped its marquee series substantially grow.
Call of Duty is an Xbox first-party title, so what’s good for Xbox is theoretically good for Call of Duty. But Call of Duty is arguably Xbox’s most important series now, and it’s not exactly the best sign for Xbox that adding its most important series to its core subscription service only helped one of those things grow.
