The February 15 edition of the official Xbox podcast dropped a ton of information regarding the future of the brand, including the highly anticipated arrival of Activision Blizzard titles to Game Pass, starting with Diablo 4.
On top of revealing that four unannounced games are going multiplatform and that Xbox is already planning the next generation of consoles, they finally confirmed when can fans expect Activision Blizzard franchises to hit the Game Pass subscription service.
Starting on March 28, Diablo 4 will be available to Game Pass users on both PC and Xbox. But there's a catch, as Game Pass Core members won't get to play it.
In a statement to The Verge, Kari Perez, head of communications at Xbox, confirmed that Game Pass Core users won't get to play Diablo 4 when it launches on the service.
Game Pass Core was introduced this past September as a way to phase out the obsolete Xbox Live Gold program. It's the cheapest out of the four tiers offered by Microsoft (console, PC, and Ultimate being the other three) costing $10 or the equivalent depending on your region.
Unlike the other Game Pass tiers, Core only offers a handful of titles for players to enjoy, roughly 25, far less than the hundreds offered by a regular subscription.
What's odd about the messaging from Microsoft is that during the podcast, Sarah Bond, president of Xbox and CEO Phil Spencer, announced that Game Pass had reached 34 million subscribers and that they could all enjoy Diablo 4, which is factually incorrect, because that number is also encompassing the Game Pass Core members, as confirmed by The Verge.
This may cause some confusion down the line when users of Game Pass' entry-level subscription interested in trying out Diablo 4 can't figure out why they aren't able to so it remains to be seen if Xbox will release a statement clarifying the availability of this and other Activision Blizzard games moving forward.