Previous Call of Duty titles continue to appear on the Microsoft Store and Xbox for PC app, but are not yet available to subscribers of Xbox Game Pass.
Call of Duty: Ghosts, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Call of Duty: WWIIand Call of Duty: Black Ops III are now all available on the Microsoft Store. This follows recently releasing Call of Duty + United Offensive, Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty: 4 Modern Warfare to the storefront just a week ago.
If you’re planning to pick up any of these old Call of Duty titles for Windows without waiting for them to be included in Game Pass, you’re free to buy them right away. However, they are all currently tagged with a full price of $60 each for standard editions. These titles were released during the paid DLC era of Call of Duty. So if you want the DLC content, you’ll have to pay even more for the upgraded editions, which can cost as much as $120 each.
The Windows editions of these older Call of Duty titles do not use Microsoft’s Xbox Play Anywhere program either. If you own them on Xbox, you’ll need to buy them again (or wait for them to join PC Game Pass) before diving back in to get a sense of nostalgia on a Windows device. If you feel like a fan of performance Collection, but the lack of Play Anywhere support has the advantage of offering stackable achievement lists for each title.
The wait for COD on Game Pass continues
Microsoft completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard King in 2023but adding the Activision catalog to Xbox Game Pass has been a slow process.
This is partly due to legal obstacles presented by the regulatory bodies during the merger, which prevented teams from Xbox and Activision from working together until the deal was approved. As a result, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2023) was the only COD title to find its way into the Xbox Game Pass library until the first day of the year’s launch Black Ops 6 on October 25, 2024.
Xbox has not announced when inheritance Call of Duty titles will finally make it to the Game Pass service, but porting these titles to Windows is a good indicator that an announcement is on the horizon. Similar events unfolded ahead of the launch of Spyro Reignited Trilogy on Game Pass, where the game was spotted with a new PC port to the Microsoft Store before an official announcement. However, Raven Software’s Singularity got one Microsoft Store listed several months ago and has yet to officially join Game Pass. So there doesn’t seem to be a fixed timeline for how long after a port it can be before a game is added.
There are clear indicators from the community that Classic Call of Duty titles are still interested. Previous Call of Duty titles saw a boon in player numbers during the summer of 2023 due to efforts to improve the servers of these older games. Black Ops 3’s Zombies mode has also been a hot spot in recent months. Xbox has a limited window for when it can possibly announce the release of classic COD titles to Game Pass, as the inclusion of the older games could potentially draw players away from the recently released Black Ops 6. Waiting too long for the announcement could also potentially embarrass away a reveal for the 2025 Call of Duty title during an Xbox Summer Showcase.
