Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Will Be On Game Pass Day 1

It’s official: The next Call of Duty will be on Xbox Game Pass day one. It’s perhaps the first real test of the major Activision-Blizzard-King acquisition, to see if it’ll all pay off for Microsoft.

Whether you like or hate it, Call of Duty is a powerhouse in this industry, and it made Activision a lot of money—and a lot of fame. It’s well known even outside of the gaming community, and it often moves huge numbers in its first few weeks for some classic trash talking and trashier multiplayer. I mean that in a nice way too; nothing quite hits like Team Deathmatch in CoD. It’s like comfort food.

This shift in strategy will test to see if Game Pass is a viable long-term strategy for Microsoft, especially now that it has to recoup that $70 billion investment. The real question is, will people just spend $15 in that first month to play a few weeks of CoD, and then leave that subscription hanging out for a few more months? Or is it more cost-effective for them to just spend $70 up front?

Everyone will do their personal financial math differently, and it all goes back to Microsoft’s pockets in the long run. But now, units sold won’t be as all-encompassing a figure to measure Black Ops 6’s success.

I also find it hard to believe that the most casual CoD players, who mostly only play it, won’t really get their full money’s worth from Game Pass. After all, the idea is having access to a huge library of games, not just one. But I guess people kept a Netflix subscription just to rewatch The Office over and over, too.

Every PlayStation State of Play SGF 2024 Announcement

I think this is the official start of “Not E3” season? Or maybe that III showcase from a few weeks ago was. Either way, Sony unveiled what we can expect for the next year of PlayStation, some of which includes PC ports and simultaneous releases with PC.

Personally, I can’t say anything really blew my mind here, but I wouldn’t call it disappointing either. Capcom continues its impressive winning streak with a stellar trailer of Monster Hunter Wilds, and it’s hard to complain about God of War Ragnarok coming to PC. One of the best games of 2022 will be available to more people—too bad it’s still going to be locked away for people who live in countries that can’t have a PlayStation Network account.

Frostpunk 2 - I'm Bad At This, The City Will Definitely Fall

Our Senior Content Manager Andrew Stretch spent some time last week in Poland to check out Frostpunk 2, the upcoming survival strategy game from 11 Bit Studios. While it’s not quite his sort of game, there’s a lot that it does to encourage a better understanding of its mechanics.

Even better, there will be lots of reasons to replay the game, according to Game Director Łukasz Juszczyk. Story chapters can change based on your decisions, and you might be able to approach different problems with better solutions after learning more about how the game works.

The Alters - Resource Management On A Smaller Scale

As part of his big Poland trip, he also checked out The Alters, also from 11 Bit’s repertoire. If you found Frostpunk to be a bit too intense or serious for your usual tastes, The Alters might be more up your alley. Resource management isn’t as hardcore, so it might be a more palatable experience, depending on your preferences.

Lead Designer Rafał Włosek and his team put a lot of work into creating branching paths and multiversal versions of the game’s protagonist. You can read more about it in Stretch’s interview with him.

Podcast: Vecna: Eve of Ruin Continues!

We’re in our third week of playing through the first dungeon in the last Dungeons & Dragons adventure, Vecna: Eve of Ruin. We’re still trying to save all four people who were kidnapped, and all the while, we’re gathering Secrets to use for… something! We’re still not sure yet. But they are for sure capital S Secrets, so they must be important!