With Microsoft’s upcoming acquisition of Activision Blizzard, fans are wondering if a World of Warcraft Xbox release date is in the future. Given the MMO’s flagging popularity as of late, WoW on Xbox Game Pass would make sense. This is especially true given how popular Final Fantasy 14 has gotten since the release of Endwalker.
Will World of Warcraft come to Xbox Game Pass and consoles?
Microsoft hasn’t explicitly stated any of its plans concerning Activision Blizzard. We can assume that there will be some changes, and giving WoW a console release might be one of them. There aren’t many console MMOs, and bringing WoW to Xbox would widen its potential audience significantly. However, programming a console-based interface and controls wouldn’t be a simple task.
Even if Microsoft brought WoW to Xbox Game Pass, how what would its profit model be? Blizzard currently charges a monthly subscription for the game, which would somewhat negate the purpose of putting it on Game Pass. We could see Microsoft letting users play through the base game and first expansion for free, then charging a subscription for content past that.
Alternatively, World of Warcraft could go the free-to-play route. Of course, that would anger a lot of the existing fanbase and might backfire on Microsoft. That’s why we think it’ll be a few years before we see any changes to the way World of Warcraft operates. Microsoft is going to want to recoup some of the massive amount of money it paid for Activision Blizzard, and rocking the boat of Blizzard’s biggest moneymaker wouldn’t be a great start.
At most, we think Microsoft might give the base game and expansions to Game Pass owners, but we doubt there’ll be any changes outside of that. An Xbox version of the game is more likely, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see that materialized in the next couple of years.
