Xbox Game Pass getting Activision's best game of the decade – and it's not Call of Duty

Since Microsoft finally closed on its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, you'd be forgiven for being a little disappointed by how many of the latter's games have actually come to Xbox Game Pass.

Gamers were assuming there'd be a deluge coming for their Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S – for example, every old Call of Duty title for them to enjoy at their leisure. However, so far it's been more of a trickle.

Diablo IV has been a headliner but there haven't been many others, until now. Xbox is allegedly adding a nice little list of games to the subscription service, including the absolutely superb skating remaster, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2. 

This brilliant game came out in 2020 and brought the phenomenal original games back to life with massively updated graphics while managing to preserve pretty much exactly how they felt to play, back in the day. That meant that a whole new generation of players could find out just how satisfying stringing together combos was, while older players who sampled the original games were given blissful doses of nostalgia. 

The leaker, eXtas1s (via VGC), claims that Pro Skater 1 + 2 isn't the only Activision title coming to Game Pass, neither – Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy will also be arriving on the service very soon, he says, along with Spyro Reignited Trilogy. 

That makes for something of a theme in the form of well-received remasters released in the last half-decade or so, and while none of them is necessarily a system-seller, the selection certainly adds up to a really welcome array of fun titles, all of them also very family-friendly. 

We don't know for certain that the games will indeed come as predicted, given that Xbox hasn't said anything as yet, but with multiple leaks now reporting the same thing, there's quite a lot of smoke here. It would be a welcome boost for Game Pass ahead of what will be a big test for it later this year.

In late October it'll be the first subscription service to get a new Call of Duty title included from the start, when Black Ops 6 releases on the platform from day one. It'll presumably be a huge litmus test internally to see how many subscribers it attracts (and retains) for Xbox.