Activision has unveiled Elite, a new subscription service that adds an elaborate social layer to its Call of Duty games, to launch with Modern Warfare 3 this fall following a public beta alongside Black Ops in the summer.
Developed by the publisher's Beachhead studio, the interface tracks a broad range of metrics to give players feedback on their own play sessions and those of friends and potential matchups, helps them find and create clans based on mutual interests, and record and share video, among other features.
At a briefing in New York, Gamasutra took a look at a preview of the platform, which will work on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, with related mobile apps planned. Two years in the making, it hopes to leverage and reward engagement among the franchise's audience through social features.
30 million people this year have played CoD multiplayer online this year, studio head Choco Sunny told us. 20 million play monthly, and 7 million play daily. The fan base is "unprecedented in the history of console gaming," he added.
"It's easy to figure out what Call of Duty players want right now, but what's difficult is anticipating what players will need in the future," said Sunny. Activision's betting that what players will need is Elite, a service aimed at "leading them into the future of connected entertainment."
The company hasn't yet decided how to set the price of the service, but said a number of the features -- groups and careers, for example -- will now be incorporated into the out-of-the-box retail experience going forward, free for all players. The rest of Elite will be positioned as a fuller-featured "premium experience," and Elite subscribers receive all forthcoming downloadable content and add-ons to Call of Duty games included with their subscription. Non-subscribers can still purchase them a la carte.
"All of the digital content that wil be coming out for Modern Warfare 3 and beyond will be all-inclusive as part of the premium membership," Activision digital VP Jamie Berger said.
EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich estimated on Twitter that 15 to 20 percent of Call of Duty players would be likely to become paying subscribers to Elite. "Even at 10 percent, that's a lot of profit," said the analyst, estimating based on the widely-reported assumption that Elite's cost would not be more than Netflix's $7.99 point.
"The price is going to be less than any other comparable entertainment or gaming service out there right now," stated Berger.
Activision's presentation aimed to enforce that users who don't subscribe won't be excluded from game features -- the intention is to provide a service that players may want. "There's been a lot of speculation that we were going to try to turn CoD into an MMO, or that we would charge for multiplayer, so we wanted to get that out out of the way right now. The out of the box experience for Call of Duty... remains the same. We made a commitment that we will not charge for multiplayer, and we're continuing with that commitment."
Beachhead's staff has a strong contingency of web developers from companies like Google versus a unified staff of traditional game developers, and that background shows in the design of a clean user interface that reflects, a bit, the web culture's current fascination with infographics and pretty ways of displaying data points.
The studio works closely with both Treyarch and Infinity Ward, and has done throughout the process of developing Elite alongside Modern Warfare 3. The team hopes to iterate further on the product offering with details gained through user feedback from the beta.
Berger says Activision has invested considerable time and effort in creating the Elite platform, and that the service is a long-term investment for the company, with effectively two teams at work on it: Beachhead as well as an additional team for service and support as is common with live services.
"We've created... a stand-alone development team and studio dedicated only to this one thing,The Beachhead team is a fulltime studio now within CoD whose whole focus is to build and launch the Elite service, and then continue to build and iterate post-launch," says Berger, likening it to Blizzard's approach to simultaneously developing and servicing World of Warcraft.
"Everyone talks about community, but how you build a community is a whole different thing... rather than being a collective bunch of strangers playing night after night. We want neighborhoods of people playing night after night, and starting to introduce themselves," says Berger.
If Activision PR could actually reign in Bobby Kotick, if there hadn't been so many quotes and news stories in the past about how much he wanted to monetize this online multiplayer base, if they weren't so nakedly concerned about achieving the subscription profitability with CoD that they have with Wow, then I don't see why anyone would have a problem with this. But as it is, Mr. Kotick has been quoted in numerous gaming sites, accurately AND unfavorably. Therefore this platform has an uphill battle with the very people it seeks to reach: hardcore gamers. The same hardcore gamers who are already expressing skepticism about MW3 because of all the news stories they have read about the shakeup at Infinity Ward.
This will still be a success, financially, there is no doubt. But Activision shareholders will never benefit from the level of success and profitability that could be achieved here if Activision PR could better manage Activision leadership's image of transparent avarice.
Having a community of CoD players sound great but not the number 1 issue. They need to focus on the "quality" of the game. With public stats and the new Elite community platform, we should be able to see and track hackers/cheaters with more accuracy. You can tell if someone's KD ratio is over 4, that there's some hacking or disconnecting involved. They need to find a way to track that stuff or improve on the in-game stat calculations, so that no matter when you leave the game, those stats count. The Elite service sounds great but they definitely need to make sure that the quality isn't watered down by the select few people who like to exploit weaknesses of the games themselves. Also would be great to back-track and load up all stats for Black Ops, even if the service is geared more towards MW3's launch.
Umm...Doesn't Steam offer this to everyone..for all games...for free? And Free DLC to justify, when in fact you are probably paying more in the end. Guess they had to figure out some scheme because people wouldn't pay for online play. So they are finding a loop hole.
I don't see the problem. No one is forcing you to pay for this. If it isn't worth the money to you then don't pay for it.
Honestly, even if CoD eventually charges online play subscriptions, then just stop buying CoD titles. Someone out there will put together a solid FPS with free online play so just jump ship.
I'll jump ship if they charge for MP. You will. But what about everyone else? They make money off the physical disc, but subscription fees are pure and continuous profit. They could probably lose half their players, maybe more, and still earn a profit.
If Activision increases their profit, even by decreasing their total player base, other companies will eventually find ways to follow suit. Gamers are afraid, because they know that when push comes to shove, many of them will grudgingly pay.
"Developed by the publisher's Beachhead studio, the interface tracks a broad range of metrics to give players feedback on their own play sessions and those of friends and potential matchups . . . record and share video, among other features."
That last part bothers me. I can already do that on Halo for free. What reason will they give to justify people paying for it...?
This will still be a success, financially, there is no doubt. But Activision shareholders will never benefit from the level of success and profitability that could be achieved here if Activision PR could better manage Activision leadership's image of transparent avarice.
"Charge people to see stats!"
"GENIUS!"
Honestly, even if CoD eventually charges online play subscriptions, then just stop buying CoD titles. Someone out there will put together a solid FPS with free online play so just jump ship.
If Activision increases their profit, even by decreasing their total player base, other companies will eventually find ways to follow suit. Gamers are afraid, because they know that when push comes to shove, many of them will grudgingly pay.
That last part bothers me. I can already do that on Halo for free. What reason will they give to justify people paying for it...?