Services Similar to CoD: Elite to Will Become a “Necessity” in Gaming – Activision
Publisher of the hugely successful Call of Duty series, Activision, has delivered quite a bold statement: the company believes social networks such as Elite will become a necessity in gaming.
Services that offer a social network within games will soon be required, if Call of Duty‘s publisher is to be believed. Activision’s Vice President of digital, Jamie Berger, told MCV:
We believe that a 24/7, year-round services strategy that broadens the game experience beyond just playing is going to be a necessity.
He added:
Right now, it’s an option but in three to five years, it won’t be. To support a diverse player base, you will have to have a services and ongoing content strategy. I don’t see how games are going to manage without that.
Berger concluded:
Elite is about Call of Duty being bigger than ever five years from now and laying the groundwork for that.
Several mainstream franchises have already started to implement services similar to Call of Duty: Elite. Electronic Arts will be utilizing EA Sports Football Club for the soon-to-be-released FIFA 12 – for free, and the company will also be integrating Autolog for their Need For Speed franchise with the next game to use it being NFS: The Run – for free. Additionally, EA will include the Battlelog social system in DICE’s Battlefield 3 – for free.
Call of Duty: Elite, meanwhile, will cost subscribers $49.99 a year. It’ll provide its users with several downloadable content packs before it’s made available on the PlayStation Network. Elite will also deliver daily and weekly competitions, as well as events which consists of both virtual and real prizes. In addition to this, subscribers will have access to ‘expert’ tips on maps, guns, and perks. Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which launches worldwide on November 8th, will be the first title in the franchise to use Elite.
21 Responses to “Services Similar to CoD: Elite to Will Become a “Necessity” in Gaming – Activision”
Services like it might be a must, but overcharging definitely isn’t. $50 for nothing special to $15 map packs to $60 expansion packs that are considered by the company to be fully fledged games. At this rate in 5 years CoD will go the way of Guitar Hero; overflooding the market with way more supply than demand.
didn’t people say that a few years ago , love it or hate it call of duty isn’t going any where any time soon , at least they give people the choice to get this or not. pluss cod this system will be taken advantage of with each cod game. if you think about it people spend that amount of money on maps anyways or other dlc. at least this gives you more then just dlc.
“Right now, it’s an option but in three to five years, it won’t be”
Yeah right because when somebody says something like this to me the first thing that comes to mind is choice.
@Timewarp
IDK why but that quote made me think of Bobby Kotick as the gaming equivalent of the soup nazi from seinfeld “Don’t wanna pay up?! NO PLAY FOR YOU!”
ya but there is a free part and there is a pay one as well.
@abercrombieco2
They’ll circumvent that by offering much more powerful weapons etc. with the Elite plan so if you wanna keep up with the competition you’d have to bite eventually or else have an unpleasant experience playing on the free model.
Oh snap am I seeing this? We have the edit function back!?
Hells yeah, I missed you
@abercrombieco2
Yeah there’s a free part now. But again read between the lines here.
“Right now, it’s an option but in three to five years, it won’t be. To support a diverse player base, you will have to have a services and ongoing content strategy. I don’t see how games are going to manage without that.”
Right at the start like I mentioned before he’s outrightly stating their going to enforce elite as mandatory then he goes onto mention how he believes games can’t manage without the service almost as if he’s implying the entire games industry should implement these changes. I don’t want to have to pay a constant stream of money to have an online for my games.
It’s ignorant of Activision to assume that this brand new idea they have is some kind of miracle to save the games industry from some non-exsistant threat. The games industry was doing just fine before Call Of Duty Elite came along. What Activision are suggesting as akin to if I went onto the PSLS forums and told everyone to comment in my style of writing or risk the entire site collesping upon itself.
i don’t think it will get to that point , maybe they’ll have it where you get extra weapons earlier or something. but to be honest i’ve played against people with better weapons then the ones i had and it didn’t make much difference. i do like the fact that it includes the maps dlc with it , so pretty much you spend that much money on maps either way.
I still think CoD is doomed. Maybe not this year, maybe even not next year, but even the idiots who buy the exact same game year after year will learn eventually. Believe me, I was one of those people. I even got Black Ops. It was just the exact same thing, slightly different story, slightly different online. MW3 is doing the same thing. Slightly different story, not including the changes from Black Ops to MP but changing a few things slightly. Slight slight slight.
Does that mean they’ll stop making CoD for a while and rethink it? And probably, oh I don’t know… IMPROVE AND MAKE IT DIFFERENT? The only thing that keeps CoD alive right now is that only 1 comes out a year (thank god) and the fact that there’s ALOT of people who buy it just from the hype it gets.
so if i have 5 games at their prize $250=Vita/PS3 + if i buy a new game every month i might be spending $100 (+ online) and that’s $1200 over the year
we gamers need to tell this fat cats
go fk yourselves
I do that every year, by not buying their games.
They’re dreaming big and spit balling, it’ll be successful with their franchise yes but the industry as a whole will not adapt this practice especially sony and first party devs like Eat Sleep Play; now microsoft on the other hand would probably look into doing something like this…
i have never paid to play a game beyond the initial purchase. (with the exception of expansions, but that’s different) and i do not intend on doing so in the future. that’s why i don’t play xbox, that’s why i don’t play WoW, that’s why i didn’t get dc universe online. (though i might get the free version now) now some people say i’m missing out on some “excellent” gaming experiences, but with the time and money i save i get to play even more games, many i think are quite excellent. right now i have over 70 ps3 games. and looking over my collection i realized something. i have never, NEVER, played a game for more than one continuous year. the only games to get close were oblivion, burnout paradise, and warhawk. other than that, i play it, beat it, and move on.
I have to agree, it’s here to stay. As long as people feel it is worth it, they will pay.
Call of Duty sucks!
its an option now but ea isnt making anybody pay for it. funny how activision makes you pay for something that is not a necessary part of a game, then says its going to be mandatory. fuck them. i can understand having an online pass for games to try to get people to buy new but this extra stuff that activison is trying to force upon the industry is stupid
I am BORED of online FPS :-/ Thank GOD(or SONY)
that the PS3 has loads of other types of games to play;)
I SAID call of duty SUCKS!