Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launch was so successful that it made Game Pass even more popular

Microsoft’s bet in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 by making it the first game in the franchise to arrive with Game Pass is now paying off.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, said while announcing the company’s financial results for Q1 of FY 2025 that Black Ops 6 has set records as the biggest launch in the franchise’s history. The popular FPS achieved the highest number of day-one players and contributed to a surge in Game Pass subscriptions.

“And unit sales on PlayStation and Steam were also up over 60% year-over-year. This speaks to our strategy of meeting gamers where they are by enabling them to play more games across the screens they spend their time on,” Nadella said further despite declines in the Xbox hardware sale by 29%.

Microsoft has been making a lot of changes on Xbox to accommodate Black Ops 6’s release. You can now selectively choose which part of the game you want to download, besides the game’s base, of course, and unify Game Pass and Microsoft Store into one on the Xbox app’s Home page on Windows.

Despite strong performance, however, CFO Amy Hood cautioned that gaming revenue may decline in the next quarter due to hardware challenges, although Black Ops 6 is expected to generate sustained revenue over time.

Elsewhere in the announcement, Microsoft also reported $65.6 billion in revenue, a 16% increase from the previous year. Cloud revenue was also particularly impressive, totaling $38.9 billion, up to 22%, driven by demand for AI and cloud services, with Azure revenue growing 33%.

You can get Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 for a not-so-free but low fee by subscribing to Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass plans.