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Call of Duty Elite to "Unite" CoD Audience

[Jun 13, 2011, 09:59 am ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

The controversial premium Call of Duty Elite service is intended to "unite" the audience for the Call of Duty series of military first=person shooters, Activision explains to MCV. "[Look at] the sheer scale of the audience – and not just by any individual game," Activision's VP of digital Jamie Berger told them. "There are four Call of Duty games in the top ten most played on Xbox Live." Here's more:

The number of people engaged made it clear to us that we had to step in and build something that was going to unite this audience. We’ve got this franchise that’s evolving but we weren’t allowing the player to evolve. We’re asking them to start all over again every year with each new game – and that can’t work.

So I think Elite is a recognition that we have 30m people worldwide doing something and we can’t just leave them to their own devices. We have to support them and get ahead of their needs, rather than always playing catch-up with them.

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15.

Re: Call of Duty Elite to "Unite" CoD Audience

Jun 13, 2011, 12:59

Tumbler

If I was activision and I wanted to charge a monthly fee for CoD the only thing I'd need to do is make a new map each month and add it to the list of maps you get to play when you are a cod elite player. After a few months there would be enough maps that someone not paying for this service would start seeing a major difference in their game. They've already tasked a company with building DLC content exclusively for this series so I'm pretty sure this is what we can expect. Going a step further I would say that at the end of the first month you'd be wise to drop a chunk of extra maps so that people immediately see a difference being an elite player vs normal player.

I'm 99% sure that is the game plan. Lock the new maps behind a monthly sub. They can claim you're getting more content for the price as you are getting new map(s) each month and people will at least have something to show for the fee each month. I am guessing $9.99 a month.

This has some advantages if you consider that someone coming back to the game 3 months out can pay $9.99 for a month and try all the new maps but this would normally cost at least $14.99 to buy the map pack and do this. For those who play all the time the cost will obviously be higher but at the same time they're getting more content than they were for free.

It will be interesting to see this in action. If they stick with the map packs every few months as they do now and still expect people to pay a monthly sub during that time I don't see how they expect to collect on that. It won't be worth it until the first map pack arrives.

...Although if they were clever and tied the elite access to new purchases via one time use code and those people didn't have to pay the fee they'd massacre the 2nd hand market and I think a SHITLOAD of people would buy it new. I'm already in Q to pick it up used from goozex. If they made used gamers pay the fee and new gamers got it free they'd probably sell a few million copies of this game each month way out into the next year.

I've always thought that the DLC dollars paled in comparison for increased sales on the retail game well after launch. If companies made it a point to release something new each month that was offered free to new game buyers they would give many gamers a reason to keep their games rather than sell them. If someone did get the game used you could still charge them for DLC so in very short order you'd have a major incentive to only buy the game new and you'd still probably have your $60 rather than discounting heavily inside a month or two.




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Comment [quote="Tumbler"Jun 13, 2011, 12:59]If I was activision and I wanted to charge a monthly fee for CoD the only thing I'd need to do is make a new map each month and add it to the list of maps you get to play when you are a cod elite player. After a few months there would be enough maps that someone not paying for this service would start seeing a major difference in their game. They've already tasked a company with building DLC content exclusively for this series so I'm pretty sure this is what we can expect. Going a step further I would say that at the end of the first month you'd be wise to drop a chunk of extra maps so that people immediately see a difference being an elite player vs normal player. I'm 99% sure that is the game plan. Lock the new maps behind a monthly sub. They can claim you're getting more content for the price as you are getting new map(s) each month and people will at least have something to show for the fee each month. I am guessing $9.99 a month. This has some advantages if you consider that someone coming back to the game 3 months out can pay $9.99 for a month and try all the new maps but this would normally cost at least $14.99 to buy the map pack and do this. For those who play all the time the cost will obviously be higher but at the same time they're getting more content than they were for free. It will be interesting to see this in action. If they stick with the map packs every few months as they do now and still expect people to pay a monthly sub during that time I don't see how they expect to collect on that. It won't be worth it until the first map pack arrives. ...Although if they were clever and tied the elite access to new purchases via one time use code and those people didn't have to pay the fee they'd massacre the 2nd hand market and I think a SHITLOAD of people would buy it new. I'm already in Q to pick it up used from goozex. If they made used gamers pay the fee and new gamers got it free they'd probably sell a few million copies of this game each month way out into the next year. I've always thought that the DLC dollars paled in comparison for increased sales on the retail game well after launch. If companies made it a point to release something new each month that was offered free to new game buyers they would give many gamers a reason to keep their games rather than sell them. If someone did get the game used you could still charge them for DLC so in very short order you'd have a major incentive to only buy the game new and you'd still probably have your $60 rather than discounting heavily inside a month or two. [/quote]

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