COD paid service revealed as Call of Duty: Elite

God I hate Bobby Kotick, he is everything wrong with the industry.

Words can't express how I feel about this... =|

Activision, we get that you like money, but you have a fucking problem, man. Soon you'll want to take over the world or something.

I'm not sure what to think of this... woah!

HELL NO!

Don't know if you have all seen this old man rant about Kotick/Microsoft before but he's preaching the real deal: (warning, vulgar language) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG15epQvKI4

Basically he rants that XBox Live is nearly impossible to cancel and now over top of that they are charging you monthly subscription fees to play a game which he believes will soon follow through into other games. I think Kotick is a brilliant businessman and CEO - he knows that mommies and daddies and people now addicted to COD's online component will not stop paying for this even with this service, soon I'd speculate you will HAVE to pay for this because otherwise you won't get matched up with good players (or something to that effect.) If you want to have this claim of being good at the game all of the good players will be playing on the paid service (think of Call of Duty players on the 360 claiming PS3 players are typically "worse" in skill so they would rather pay for XBox Live and play there.)

This isn't a good sign for us consumers but we have seen a rise in indie game developers and other devs like CD Projekt (makers of The Witcher 2/GOG) that are treating their players like gold. We're entering the "Thank-you economy" across the board and soon the real successful companies are going to be the ones that out-care their opponents. We're heading towards a point in this industry with high priced/under valued DLC and service fees that your average consumer is going to get fed up when they find out that there are people willing to cater to them. It won't be a sudden change - it might take the next five years, but this is not a sustainable or practical way to treat your consumers and it will only take some efforts and capital for these companies treating their consumers well to change this trend of high prices for low value. (Then we'll see it shift back as those companies get greedy and the cycle starts again...)

I really don't know what to think about this, since I've already past to point where I've kinda stopped caring about the Call of Duty series. It's pretty bad of them to start charging for a service that was free in previous versions of the game, I'll say that.

So let me get this straight, I pay a fee for Xbox Live and now Activision wants me to pay a montly fee to play their multiplayer on MW3? What's the point of Xbox offering Xbox Live if it doesn't technically let me play all the games online? I'm a poor college kid who techincally should not be paying for xbox live because of my stressed financial condidtion; so if Acitivsion expects me to pay for their multiplayer that should be apart of the sixty dollar retail version of the game they can respectfully go fuck themselves. What kind of road does this take multiplayer console gaming? To reduce this to absurdity, will we eventually go to Bestbuy, buy a sixty dollar retail disk and then have to pay for the single player, the multiplayer, or even the fucking options menu separately? Honestly, I was probably not going to buy MW3 because I did not really like MW2 nor Black Ops, but this just solidifies my no.

Oh ok, but be that as it may I still would feel cheated if I bought the game, which is already expensive, and not have a pretty siginifcant part of the multiplayer that previous games in the series and other games such as Halo have done for free. Additionally, where does all of this DLC and extra paid content end? I never really had a problem with extra paid content in games because it never really affected my experience because pretty much all extra content was something in addition to the game...now during the past few years, there has been a shift from that kind of content to content that is on the disk or content that developers purposefully leave out in order to charge later. Now Activision is supporting extra content that was in previous games in the COD series. This is awful because in away this encourages developers not to go out of there way to include content in their games that expands or builds off previous implementations of this content in the series but, instead, it encourages the devloper to with hold content that regresses the game to an inferior state compared to other games in the series and genre.

I don't see what all the fuss is about. I myself have always said that in order for the gaming industry to evolve, we need to adopt more services targeted towards people who hate having money. There are plenty of people in the world today with wallets overburdened with cumbersome cash, and the best way to help those unfortunate people is for them to alleviate their wallets each month paying for what sounds like a glorified CoD version of MySpace.

Taking features that have always been freely available before on other online services, and expecting people to pay a subscription fee for them is a sound marketing strategy, apparently. It worked for Xbox LIVE Gold, so I guess it can work here!

In all honesty, sarcasm aside, I think the saddest part of this whole thing is that CoD: Elite might actually be a success for Activision.

Activision just shot them self in the face. Let's all sit back and enjoy watching them fall.

monetize the fans.

outlook for investors, caution in a bad environment.

pump and dump activizzard 3/4th quarter 2011.

This tears it I'm getting Battlefield 3.

As long as it is not a "You must pay for this to get online" instance, I'm fine with it. To be honest, people decide wether to buy this or not, so it's their call (as it always has been).

no

So... Yeah I'd rather NOT piss on my money, thank you.

Why do I get Bungie.net vibes from this? Oh wait, because it pretty much is a Bungie.net experience except... I.. have to pay for it. No thanks Activision

No way am I getting this crap. First of all, I would hardly use these bonus 'features' even if they were free and no way am I paying money for that shit. If they try to extend this into more stuff like weapons and actual multiplayer I wont buy this game. There are better games out there. I'll play them. If every game ends up being this pay to play shit beyond the fee for Xbox Live or a similar service that applies to every game for a system I just won't play games anymore.

And despite how stupid it is, I'm sure a lot of people out there are gonna pay for this.

So basically you subscribe to use leader boards?

I'll pass on this.

Now obviously, this is a ploy, which, in the immediate seems, well, rather insignificant. You don't pay for the subscription, and well, you just go on your merry way. But later on, and by that, i would assume, 2 months after the release, people will notice that game matching and finding teams will become more and more of a time-consumption; as is with the older Call of Duty games (Less people playing, more time searching for a game). This, will inevitable lead to pressure to purchase this "Service" in order to just find a game online. I have no doubt that EA is going to be very Prejudice with this subscription service, they're squeezing the last ounces of blood from your drained corpse, and will not stop until this Train crashes into the depths of hell.

Yet another reason why I'm praying that Battlefield 3 Delivers on every level possible. Corporate greed is reaching its climax this time it seems.

"Mr. Kotick said Call of Duty Elite, and the customer-service operation that will be needed to support it, wouldn’t be possible if the service was free. “This is an enormous investment,” he said."

That line is alone the biggest sack of bullshit I have heard in years. I don't want to be Mr. PC elitist here but guess what system allows for the exact same features for free? I mean what is that PC service we can download for free that allows us to track down friends(not to mention their activities within the service), servers, games, demos, achievements, stats, take pictures, and other such goodies for free? I try my best to remain a straight face to shit like this but to be honest it's this crap that has almost completely pushed me away from being a console gamer.

Talk about niche market, really I see a use for this if I was a hardcore CoD junkie and that was the only game me and friends play. I mean, I assume only hardcore players would get into this especially since it's more of an add on to things you can get free elsewhere.

I guess a one stop shop for CoD would be worth paying for but not me. Unless it included everything Activision like Steam or B.Net...

Who the hell is going to pay $8 a month for that? If enough people would, sooner or later they'll start selling weapon/armor upgrades.

Call of Duty, prepare to be guitar hero'd

great, another way to milk out the fans' money...

to be honest...its not like they couldn't just give us these things for free....seeing as they got soo much money off the COD franchise and any of the competitors that did similar things (bungie.net) did it with no subscription fees. Iono "comparable to netflix"!? are u kidding me? Netflix has way more value than what they are offering.

I hope this fails miserably....not because I hate COD or anything, but if this is a success....you can bet your ass all the other developers might start doing the same shit...

[...] [Source: Wallstreet. 4playerpodcast] [...]

Its hard to notice, but this is the first step in the franchise requiring a subscription to play online. Its only a matter of time.

I've have owned every Call of Duty, including Black Ops. Because there's certain times when I just want mindless running around and killing people game play. I'm not even sure if I'm gonna buy MW3, but the fact that the company would be so transparently greedy, makes me want to not give them a fucking dime. I hope that this will be a huge crash and burn for the Call of Duty series, but, knowing how mindless a lot of the world is, I feel like the majority of people are just gonna gobble this up. I mean there are people who do nothing else but play this game. Also, the company could at least PRETEND like they care about actually giving these people who are gonna pay for this service an experience that is worth their money. When in reality they seem to just be trying to get as much money as they can.

Pay the low price of $19.95 and you get a free in-game scope attachment that does absolutely nothing, but looks cool!

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Pay another low price of $60 for the game and then $100 to be allowed to press the start button to play the game! It's so low of an offer, it's practically a steal!

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

*Call of Duty Canceled*

Doing this with a highly anticipated BF3 coming out? Actvision definitely has some balls. Maybe not brains, but balls.

I'm curious as to how much back lash there's going to be from this. This is really stupid...

The only part of this that you actually have to pay for is the advanced stat tracking, and the ability to form clans for clan battles and tournaments that are hosted through the service, these tournaments will have actual prizes too them so I can see that as why they are wanting it to be a pay service. The people who pay also supposedly get free access or early access to the map packs, as opposed to those that dont, giving them an advantage of knowing the maps on release. There are people who play CoD Religiously, and for them, paying this would be no different than paying $15 a month to play WoW. But for those of us who dont play CoD like its essential to life, we arent forced to pay, we arent having our arms twisted, and our original call of duty experience will not be tainted. You are all complaining for no reason.

Didn't carlos predict something like this back when he brought up how BLOPS says multi-player free with your copy.

Think he might've been onto something, eben if it wasn't the multi-player itself.

Didn't carlos predict something like this back when he brought up how BLOPS says multi-player free with your copy.

Think he might've been onto something, even if it wasn't the multi-player itself.

Heard about this couple of days and I went, No.

I could see them pricing it for, say, $2 a month, as this service they're making is very fringe. I can't wrap my head around the point of it being priced, however. If it will only connect players that are actively using the service, it won't be worth any price paid unless - somehow - millions of players subscribe to it. I very much doubt it, if all it is is a glorified Call of Duty Facebook..

Thanks Activision for making me love TF2 even more. All 9€ of it.

I may spend my $7.99 per month on downloadable games instead, to support indie developers and expose myself to a wider variety of games. I only ever play Call of Duty multiplayer for a few weeks anyway.

They should've really done something like Bad Company 2's VIP content, to encourage buying new but charging people who bought used. Yes, it'd still be shitty, but significantly less shitty than this and what this will ultimately, almost inevitably lead to (charging for multiplayer outright).

Don't really like the idea.....

Bungie has given us these things for free, but they still had Bungie Pro, which was basically them having you pay for more server space to keep your maps, films, and other things, which I think is fair though. This however doesn't deserve to be a paid service.

I don't think I will be getting this.

Not getting this, I have never been addicted to COD multiplayer to the point that I would pay a monthly fee to get more out of it. This could ruin the multiplayer of Call of Duty if COD Elite subscribers end up getting access to guns at earlier levels, or obtain higher powered guns only available by signing up.

Many people are protesting about it now, and I think it's going to be split 50/50 in the end. There are too many COD followers that will join anything Call of Duty, but there are many that will not want to pay for Xbox Live AND for COD Elite at the same time.

Kotick you coy bastard, so you have ANY idea how many 9-12 year olds are going to steal their mother's credit cards! Just because WoW generates 70% of Activision's profit doesn't mean COD has to do the same thing. I hope so much that this bombs.

This is what we can now definitively call the beginning of the end. This is the kind of greedy, money-loving BS that will seal the end of just about any game. Activision is becoming more and more disliked in the gaming community and this is easily one of the last nails in the coffin. Even a "juggernaut" like Activision or the Call of Duty series can be brought down fairly easily by this much of a backlash. I have yet to see one comment anywhere that's legitimately 100% for this (Or even 60% for that matter lol). CoD's community has put up with the ridiculous map prices, for the most part, but now that Activision has shown what it wants to turn CoD into people have finally had enough and have come out with a loud and irate "NO!!!". They've been trying to defend themselves using all kinds of lame excuses like, "Well, the fans don't know what the full services are yet." I think it's fair to say that people have seen where this may be headed and with other games coming around the corner that have even the slightest possibility to steal CoD's fanbase I think we could easily be seeing the demise of the so called juggernaut because of their publisher's money-milking ways.

I guess this will be one CoD game i will not be getting o-o..

why did i even bother applying for the beta i don't even play fps games let alone cod

:forevercasual:

That dude is fucking annoying..

Atleast the dance scene was kinda funny.

I really dont see a problem with this? It may actually come in handy, and those who play it hardcore will love this. Youc an still play a round or 2 and stop playing without paying.

And those who whine about 8 dollars should look for a job and stop living of daddy's creditcard.

Gees, buy a few donuts less on your school lunch break. Now you got the money for it and lose weight, congratz.