Call of Duty Sets Sights on a Fee For Online Elite Mode

The Wall Street Journal has posted the news that Activision is readying an announcement that will find the next Call of Duty title, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, offering up a pay to play monthly subscription fee. The service, called Call of Duty Elite will be a monthly payment that will "provide extra content that isn't offered on game discs sold in stores, including downloadable map packs that give players new Call of Duty levels to play.

Consumers are used to paying $60 each for videogames that run on consoles like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Now the publisher behind the industry's biggest videogame franchise— "Call of Duty"—is about to find out whether it can get them to pay a monthly bill, too.

Activision Blizzard Inc. plans to launch an online service called Call of Duty Elite this fall that will work with the next major edition of the game, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3," and future installments of the hyper-realistic combat-simulation game. In a move industry executives describe as a first, Activision plans to charge a monthly subscription fee for the service, which will provide extra content that isn't offered on game discs sold in stores, including downloadable map packs that give players new "Call of Duty" levels to play.

Activision executives said they haven't yet figured out how much to charge for the service, but they expect the cost to be less than fees for comparable online-entertainment services, such as a $7.99-a-month Netflix Inc. movie subscription. Portions of the service will be free, including features inspired by Facebook Inc. that will let "Call of Duty" players meet for online gun battles with others who share various affiliations and interests.

Both Infinity Ward's Rob "FourZeroTwo" Bowling and Activision's Dan "OneOfSwords" Amrich are in damage control mode on Twitter, suggesting that Call of Duty's core online experience will continue to remain free just as it has in past games.

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Like other publishers, Activision has earned money selling "Call of Duty" map packs and other digital content for one-time charges, but subscriptions to its new service could give it a continuing way to capitalize on the online popularity of the game.

Rob Dyer, senior vice president of publisher relations at Sony's U.S. games division, said only a few games have the audience loyalty and size to support a subscription service like Call of Duty Elite. Mr. Dyer said he is "very confident" other publishers will follow Activision's lead. "There's money to be made there," he said.

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fatBastard() said:

One could argue that it depends on what you get the your XX monthly fee.

World of Warcraft users don't seem to mind paying every month and if a monthly fee for a FPS like Call of Duty means a guaranteed minimum access to dedicated servers with this or that mode activated and/or a minimum of YY new maps each month, then I can easily imagine a lot of fans would consider it worth the money … but in the end it all depends on the fine print.

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Call of Duty Elite free features detailed, “even haters can play for free”

Home > News > Call of Duty Elite free features detailed, “even haters can play for free”

Activision have updated the official Call of Duty Elite FAQ to include a list of the free features included in the service. Call of Duty Elite is set to launch alongside Modern Warfare 3 on November 8, and will be backwards compatible with Call of Duty: Black Ops. You’ll find the list of free features below.

Elite’s free features will let you:

Access Elite through the web as well as Elite’s free custom iOS and Android applications for smartphones and tablets
Communicate any way you want across mobile, console and the web with your friends
Track and share thousands of stats with friends – k/d ratios, score-per-minute, win % and loads more, all represented in easy to understand charts and infographics
Create your own custom leaderboards to track friendly rivalries – who is moving up and down in your group of friends?
Analyze advanced heat maps detailing your match-by-match performance – where you killed or got killed, when it happened, and more
Analyze your weapons performance – which weapons you are best with in which situations
Upload and share videos of your greatest moments through our exclusive theater mode with the touch of a button
After you analyze your performance to your heart’s content – Customize your loadout – search through all the weapons, attachments and perks, and push them directly into the game menu from the web or your mobile device with the touch of a button
Join dozens of groups and find other players with common interests to play with and compete against – find people who make the game the most fun for you – TDM, Lakers’ fans, Weekend Warriors
Create a Clan with players who share your interests and taste for competition
Bring your Facebook friends right into the game, easily taking your existing network into the Call of Duty experience.
Seamlessly be placed into Groups with those who share your affinities and interests based on your Facebook profile.
Start tracking your Call of Duty career — everything you wanted to know about your performance across the franchise starting with Black Ops


Activision say that more free features will be added as the service grows after launch. Premium features aren’t listed yet because “the service was designed to be deeply integrated with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and will not be demonstrable until we are closer to the launch of the game.” Activision promise full details “by the end of the summer.” They’re also keen to reinforce the fact that “Elite only adds to the Call of Duty experience … if you want to continue to play Call of Duty as you always have, you will still be able to do just that,” adding that “even haters can play for free.”

We do know that subscribers will get access to a Call of Duty web TV show featuring “top Hollywood talent.” To get an inside look at the service, you can sign up to be part of the closed beta test now.

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xSamhainx said:

I dont give a shit what they plan to give for free in light of this new micro-fund-suck. I dont like this, it sets a horrible example for the others.

It used to be that companies gave you extra stuff just to keep you a customer, now the attitude is they give you extra and dammit you need to be thankful for it. Now pay for the REALLY GOOD EXTRA stuff. I guess I'm just pining for the Old Days as we are wont to do at times, and half-drunk and maybe making a CelticFrost moment here, but seriously…. fuck them.

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Less than a month after revealing plans for a new Call of Duty subscription service called Elite, Activision's Dan Amrich has revealed that over 2 million users have signed up for the beta.

"I just got the number back, and it blew my mind," writes Amrich on his website One of Swords. "More than 2 million gamers have signed up at callofduty.com/elite so far — and they hit that number in less than two weeks."

Despite the large number of signups, Amrich says there's plenty of room for more. "Don’t be discouraged by the big number, thinking you shouldn’t bother because they already have enough people — two million volunteers among 30 million Call of Duty players is a small amount. More would be even better."

Call of Duty Elite will bring a new social dimension to the popular franchise by allowing players to find friends of similar skill level and interests, to join clans, to join groups, to play in organized tournaments and more.

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Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg says the company needs to be "transparent and honest and human" with its community in order to shed its undeserved reputation as gaming's Evil Empire.

If you were told to name the most soulless, corporate and downright evil videogame company in the business today, your response would almost certainly be Activision. Somehow, despite making the most popular videogames on the planet, the company is also far and away the most widely loathed. Hirshberg, naturally, says that rep is entirely undeserved, but he also recognizes the need to turn it around.

"I think that the case is drastically overstated in terms of the reality that I see," he said in an interview with Gamasutra. "I see a very creative company that gives its developers the tools and the resources they need to do great things, that isn't afraid to [delay] games if that's what it takes to get them right."

One of Activision's biggest problems from a public relations standpoint is that it tends to be seen as a relentless machine that grinds ideas into money, an image that CEO Bobby Kotick sometimes seems to actively cultivate. That's a perception that Hirshberg would like to change.

"It's about putting a human face on the company. It's about being transparent and honest and human in our dealings with our community," he continued. He pointed out the handling of the Modern Warfare 3 leak as a fine example of the right way to go about engaging the fan base, adding, "We got a lot of props and a lot of pleasantly surprised people in our reaction to that. People assumed that we would go silverback gorilla crazy, and we didn't."

The upcoming Call of Duty Elite is a prime example of the Activision dichotomy: forums exploded with rage over the idea of a subscription-based CoD service while at the same time, more than two million gamers rushed to sign up for the beta. Hirshberg acknowledged that the limited information revealed in the announcement, necessitated by the fact that much of it is embedded into Modern Warfare 3, caused confusion, but he also noted that some people are just determined to get mad about things. "I'm not sure that there was any way we could have messaged it any better and not gotten that response from that portion of the audience,"

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