After two years as a day-one addition to Xbox Game Pass, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will skip the subscription service at launch. The 180 from Microsoft this year is confusing, as evidenced by the fact that a new pre-order ad goes out of its way to remind people that Modern Warfare 4 won’t arrive on Game Pass in 2026.
“Got served the below ad randomly on Facebook,” shared a user on the gaming forum ResetEra. “It’s from the official account, so I assume it’s a legit official asset. Just wild for them to know things are so messy and confusing that their social ads need to have specific callouts like this.” The ad reads, “Lock-in campaign early access,” one of the bonus features for pre-ordering the game. But why would Xbox Series X/S or PC players pre-order a game that’s coming to Game Pass? That’s apparently precisely the type of question Activision is looking to head off with the second part of the ad, which reads “Not on Xbox Game Pass this year.”
Call of Duty is running ads for Modern Warfare 4 that specifically state the game is “not on Xbox Game Pass” to avoid players who are assuming it will be after the last two years pic.twitter.com/op3ReUjbAb
— CharlieIntel (@charlieINTEL) June 29, 2026
The awkward marketing conundrum arrives after Microsoft announced it was pulling new annual Call of Duty releases from the Netflix-like service back in April. The decision likely came down to the fact that having Call of Duty on Game Pass day-and-date jacked the price up so high that subscribers churned out of it in droves. At the same time, sales of last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 were seemingly bad enough to cause a slight panic. Bloomberg reported that including Black Ops 6 on Game Pass at launch ended up costing Microsoft around $300 million in lost revenue.
There’s clearly hope that Modern Warfare 4 going back to being a traditional Call of Duty release will help get things back on track. Though seemingly wielding “Not on Xbox Game Pass” as a low-key threat in pre-order marketing materials is a perfect example of the current contradictions facing Microsoft’s gaming division. The company needs to get people excited for its console gaming ecosystem with special perks and excusive games. At the same time, the only way to fuel its sprawling publishing apparatus at this point is by getting its biggest games onto as many platforms as possible and get players to actually spend top-dollar for it.
For years, Xbox’s rallying cry has been “play it on Game Pass.” No longer, at least for Call of Duty.