Activision Unveils ‘Call of Duty Elite,’ a Facebook for Frags

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As a business move, Elite looks like a first step towards more robust social networking around Activision’s games and a way to look for additional revenue streams. Activision’s business strategy has annualized many of their big franchises, like Spider-Man or Transformers, to increase profits. With Call of Duty in particular, it’s rotated the development teams that make each year’s game to ensure a fresh release every holiday season.

They also offer downloadable content at a higher price point than other publishers and, at $15 for three extra levels, some fans feel like the DLC map packs for COD games are overpriced. Nevertheless, Activision’s remained steadfast in saying that they’re never going to charge COD players for online access.

So with that backdrop, the big question remains: How’s Call of Duty Elite going to make money? The answer to that is in the premium option of the service that Activision will be offering.

Premium subscribers will be able to compete in contests against each other for prizes and Activision’s also planning to set up tournaments against top-ranked and maybe even celebrity players. There’s no word on pricing for premium membership yet, but it’s expected to be in the $8-$10/month range as charged by other content subscription services like Netflix. Company reps likened the premium status to country club memberships. You’re playing the same sport, but shell out cash for a better experience.

And while Elite promises to give all your COD activity a place to live, there will be a cut-off as far as the history of the franchise is concerned. Despite the fact that older Call of Duty games like 2009’s Modern Warfare 2 still enjoy healthy, active communities, Activision’s not promising that Elite will be backward-compatible beyond Black Ops. Previous games may harvest the same data for leaderboards and statistics, but they weren’t built to feed into Elite the way that Modern Warfare 3 will be.

Jamie Berger, Activision’s President of Digital, says that the publisher believes that social integration will be the next vector of innovation in video games. Just as they’re now judged on graphics, gameplay and other elements, games in the coming years will be judged on how well they let you connect to other players.

Elite isn’t the first service to give gamers a portable identity across multiple games. Bungie rolled out Bungie.net with the debut of Halo 2 and Blizzard’s long had their Battle.net service for players of World of Warcraft and Starcraft games. Those services, however, have been free with no enticement of an extra tier for those who’d pay for it.

Still, Call of Duty boasts an incredibly engaged user community, with Activision claiming that 7 million people play a COD game every day. In the hyper-competitive ecosystem surrounding most multiplayer video games, it’s a fair gamble to think that at least some of those 7 million daily players will pay for the chance to improve. If Activision’s Elite bet pays off, it’ll be the ultimate perk.

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