• Activision Blizzard says Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Diablo IV will not feature on Xbox Game Pass this year.
• The latest titles from the developer are slated for availability in 2024, however.
• Microsoft plans to finally complete its acquisition of Activision Blizzard on Friday this week.

Later this week, Friday if everything goes according to plan, Microsoft aims to finally complete its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, after regulators in key regions have given the green light on the deal.

With the acquisition set to give Microsoft access to a bevy of titles, as well as any future projects that are in the works at Activision Blizzard, the notion of availability on Game Pass was addressed this week.

To that end, Activition Blizzard took to its official X account to clarify what is going to happen with two titles in particular – Diablo IV and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. Here both titles are not expected to be available on Microsoft’s wildly popular service in 2023, but are anticipated to arrive sometime next year.

“As we continue to work toward regulatory approval of the Microsoft deal, we’ve been getting some questions whether our upcoming and recently launched games will be available via Game Pass,” the post highlighted.

“While we do not have plans to put Modern Warfare III or Diablo IV into Game Pass this year, once the deal closes, we expect to start working with Xbox to bring our titles to more players around the world. And we anticipate that we would begin adding games into Game Pass sometime in the course of next year,” it added.

As The Verge crucially points out, the short statement from Activision Blizzard cites the fact that the developer/publisher has been fielding questions from fans as to whether its vast library of titles will be available via Game Pass, but actually does not give a definitive answer.

As such, things might still get a little complicated when it comes to exclusivity, especially given that the Call of Duty franchise was a particular sticking point in recent months.

Either way, those hoping that the deal closing would result in an instant growth in the library of titles available on Gam e Pass, may still have to wait awhile before that happens, as Microsoft will likely want to optimise said titles for use across the different platforms and devices that make use of Game Pass.