They have retained people without the new COD. I think they will continue to keep people (not sure about add?) as they drip feed more old COD games to their service as well as older Activision titles.The game is better than MW 3 last year at least from the beta I played, The sales should do better accounting for digital and even match MW2 sales overall. The useless DAU/MAU metric will be sky high on PS5 this weekend with MH wilds beta and blops 6.
The challenge for xbox is retaining the new people who just bought a month of gamepass to play the campaign and not bleed numbers from the people who usually buy cod every year. On the other hand they can gain a lot if they can convince CoD bros on xbox to subscribe for 240$ a year rather than pay 70$ and with the average american IQ you never know people can actually do dumb shit like that.
There is a place for PS Plus and Game Pass, but a small one IMO. And it has no place with me. I only have them because of the insane stellar deal I had on both with stacking. Both expire in 2025 and I am done with them. I will only do CORE/ESSENTIAL, and that is when I need it.