While Microsoft had confirmed that, along with reducing the price for Game Pass subscriptions, it would stop releasing new Call of Duty titles on the service on day one of release quite some time ago, the company’s latest advertising efforts for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 might seem a bit misguided. As spotted by ResetEra user CloseTalker, social media ads for Modern Warfare 4 are proudly advertising the fact that it is “Not on Xbox Game Pass this year.”
Interestingly, it looks like Activision and Microsoft realized their mistake quite quickly, and a quick search through Meta’s Ad Library indicates that it has since been taken down. Reports have indicated, however, that the ads began running over the weekend, starting on June 27th, and were spread around across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
Xbox had announced that the subscription price for Game Pass Ultimate would be going down from $29.99 to $22.99 in April. The announcement came after plenty of backlash against a price hike from back in October 2025. Chief strategy officer Matthew Ball later revealed in an interview that the service had lost “millions of subscribers” when prices were raised.
Interestingly, more recent reports have indicated that Game Pass as a whole might be seeing an upheaval, especially when it comes to third-party games. According to Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Shams Jorjani, developers had discussed getting “the rug pulled out from under them” when it came to their Game Pass deals. While Jorjani doesn’t think that the service is ending by any means, he does believe that some of the last third-party Game Pass deals might have been signed, at least for now.
First-party games might be facing similar issues if analysts are to be believed. Following Xbox’s confirmation that Call of Duty games would stop showing up on Game Pass on day one of their release, Ampere Analysis’ Piers Harding-Rolls spoke about how the company might decide to pull more of its first-party releases from the service.
“This is still a core piece of the offer,” he wrote, referring to the value offered by day-one Xbox games releasing on Game Pass. “However, this opens the door to potential windowing of other new 1st-party releases.”
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 was officially unveiled back in May. The title is coming to PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2 on October 23rd and features a new story that revolves around North Korea invading South Korea, turning the entire peninsula into a warzone. Modern Warfare 4 will star a new protagonist – Private Park – who eventually gets to meet Captain Price, who seems to be on his own mission after cutting ties with Task Force 141.
Recently, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma spoke about how the Call of Duty franchise is one of the biggest in the world, even when compared with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “If you think about it, we’ve got the number two show of all time on Amazon [Fallout]; Minecraft was top 5 in 2025; Call of Duty is bigger than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So, it all measures. [There’s] more appetite to work with us on titles than ever before,” she said.
