Modern Warfare 4 launches October 23 as a paid release, with Game Pass to follow late next year

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches on October 23 as a standalone release and will not be part of Xbox Game Pass on day one, according to an Xbox Wire post published Thursday. Campaign early access begins October 16.

GameSpot reports that at launch, buying the game will be the only way to play it. The base edition costs $70 and the Vault edition costs $100.

Activision said the game will come to Xbox Game Pass at some point around the end of next year, according to GameSpot. That means a window of roughly a year when it is available only as a paid purchase. GameSpot also notes that Activision has spent months reminding players the game will not be in Game Pass at launch, and the new post repeats that message.

The change breaks with the last two years. Black Ops 6 in 2024 was the first Call of Duty to launch directly into Game Pass, and Black Ops 7 did the same in 2025. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that new Call of Duty games would no longer launch in the service, and it paired that announcement with a cut to the subscription price. GameSpot says Microsoft has never explicitly given a reason. The outlet points to reports that putting Black Ops 6 in Game Pass cost Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales, though that figure has been disputed. GameSpot also links the change to Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s wider “reset” of the Xbox business.

Several older entries are still in the Game Pass Ultimate catalog, according to GameSpot:

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
• Call of Duty: WW2
• Call of Duty: Vanguard
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022)