Treyarch discusses how being on Game Pass is impacting Black Ops 6’s development

Treyarch has discussed how Black Ops 6’s inclusion on Game Pass is impacting the final stretch of the new Call of Duty game’s development.

Microsoft announced at the end of May that Black Ops 6 will be the first Call of Duty title to launch on the subscription service on day one, when it’s released on October 25, 2024.

Exactly when the Game Pass news was revealed to Black Ops 6 co-development studios Treyarch and Raven Software isn’t clear, but it sounds like it was fairly recently.

“We haven’t known about Game Pass for that long,” Yale Miller, senior director of production at Treyarch, said in a newly published interview on VGC. “It was something that we were questioning whether or not it was going to happen.”

While Miller sounded excited by the potential of the game reaching more players than previous series entries, he said its developers are keen to ensure that first-time players aren’t overwhelmed by the variety of content that’s available.

Given this will be the first Black Ops game to be released since 2020’s Gulf War, onboarding was already a concern for the studio, but the title’s inclusion on Game Pass has made the need for it to be highly accessible even more pressing.

“From the beginning, with Black Ops 6, we definitely thought about how it’s going to be a long time since players played a Black Ops game,” Miller said.

“So whether it’s Zombies – this big epic experience with huge questlines and a great story, there’s a lot of players who just won’t know, will have never played a round-based zombie experience.

“So how can we teach people that with multiplayer and foundational stuff on movement? There’s a lot to show players, so we’ve been thinking from the beginning about how we bring players in.

Further reading

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Activision confirms which Black Ops 6 content is available with each Game Pass tier

The new Call of Duty will be available on Microsoft's subscription service on day one

“Since we found out about Game Pass, we’re re-looking at those things,” he continued. “There’s hopefully going to be more players than ever, at least trying. We think we’ve made a cool game that’s fun to play, that actually has a really big variety of experiences for lots of different players.

“So how can we make it clear to players how to get in, how to experience it, how to find the fun for them and make it clear that ‘hey, this mode is about this, and this is about this’?

“And even in multiplayer we have party modes, and loads of other things that we do, so how can we be clear to players who’ve maybe not played Call of Duty before that ‘here’s the different offerings, and here’s ways you can access them’.”

Publisher Activision recently detailed which Black Ops 6 content will be available on each Game Pass tier.

It also confirmed that Black Ops 6 will require users to have a persistent internet connection across all game modes, including its campaign.