Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Dev Talks About Game Pass Launch’s Impact on Development

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 developer Treyarch didn’t know whether the game was going to be on Xbox Game Pass until recently. In an interview with VGC, senior director of production at Treyarch, Yale Miller, talks about the studio learning that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be on Game Pass, and how it is affecting development of the game.

“We haven’t known about Game Pass for that long,” said Miller to VGC. “It was something that we were questioning whether or not it was going to happen.”

Miller went on to talk about how being on Game Pass will help Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 in terms of continuity and onboarding for players. Since it is coming to the subscription service, according to Miller, the game needs to be more accessible to new players than before.

“From the beginning, with Black Ops 6, we definitely thought about how it’s going to be a long time since players played a Black Ops game,” Miller said. “So whether it’s Zombies – this big epic experience with huge questlines and a great story, there’s a lot of players who just won’t know, will have never played a round-based zombie experience.”

“So how can we teach people that with multiplayer and foundational stuff on movement,” he continued. “There’s a lot to show players, so we’ve been thinking from the beginning about how we bring players in.”

Miller also spoke about re-examining these aspects of the design of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, since the game will likely see a surge in player numbers. This means that newcomers to the series will also need some help in getting caught up with the Black Ops series storyline, as well as how the game’s multiplayer and Zombies modes will work.

“Since we found out about Game Pass, we’re re-looking at those things,” he said. “There’s hopefully going to be more players than ever, at least trying. We think we’ve made a cool game that’s fun to play, that actually has a really big variety of experiences for lots of different players.”

“So how can we make it clear to players how to get in, how to experience it, how to find the fun for them and make it clear that ‘hey, this mode is about this, and this is about this’?”

Even the multiplayer side of things will get some more casual game modes to help players learn the game, such as party modes, and other objectives that players can chase rather than just going for kills.

“And even in multiplayer we have party modes, and loads of other things that we do, so how can we be clear to players who’ve maybe not played Call of Duty before that ‘here’s the different offerings, and here’s ways you can access them’.”

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on October 25. Contrary to recent reports, the game will not be needing 310 GB of storage to install.