One million Call of Duty Elite memberships sold
So how unprecedented was demand for Call of Duty Elite? Activision has announced that it's only taken six days to sell one million premium memberships to Call of Duty Elite.
So how unprecedented was demand for Call of Duty Elite? Activision has announced that it's only taken six days to sell one million premium memberships to Call of Duty Elite. To put that figure in perspective, Activision notes that it took Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Xbox Live about a year to reach one million paid subscribers.
Since its launch, more than four million gamers have registered for Call of Duty Elite, including basic memberships. Over 80,000 clans have been created, and 100,000 user-generated videos have been uploaded.
Some of the one million sales were made up by the Hardened Edition. For a $40 premium, the limited edition included a one year subscription.
GameStop stores sold 600K of the one million memberships, meaning Call of Duty Elite--an online subscription service--has been a more successful retail product than an online one.
Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard commented in a press release: "The audience response to Call of Duty Elite's premium service has been beyond our expectations, and we want to thank Call of Duty players around the world for their unprecedented enthusiasm." The overwhelming response to CODE has resulted in spotty service, with Activision promising fully operational service by December 1st.
"The demand for Call of Duty Elite at launch was so overwhelming, that for the first several days, the service did not perform up to our or our fans standards. I want to personally thank our fans for their patience. Our teams have been working around the clock to get the service scaled up to meet demand," said Eric Hirshberg, CEO, Activision Publishing. As recompense for its lackluster launch, Activision has extended people's memberships by a month.
Once Elite services become more stable, Activision plans on bringing the service to PC as well. It is currently available on Xbox 360 and PS3 for $60/year, and includes every forthcoming DLC release. Given the numerous $15 map packs developed for Black Ops, it wouldn't be surprising if the membership paid for itself.
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replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, One million Call of Duty Elite memberships sold.
So how unprecedented was demand for Call of Duty Elite? Activision has announced that it's only taken six days to sell one million premium memberships to Call of Duty Elite.-
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Right now, yes, its optional, and the like.
But this gives Activision enough justification to "push" things that were normally part of the core price into the service package, knowing that people will suck it up. (Yes, they haven't said any plans along this line, but come on, this is Activision; when Pachter predicted a few years ago that Activision was going to have a pay-for service, Activision originally said they had no plans along those lines. And now, bam, Elite.)
Whether its things like having certain playlists or game modes to Elite, specific weapons, or whatever, they have every justification they need to start segregating their customers like this to extract more money. They could be completely above the counter and not do that, but the pieces are in place for them to do so.-
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Still selling
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(1) No one is forcing you to buy or play their games. If you don't like their pricing model, don't support them. There are so many fucking games and game devs out there on every platform and at every price, it is stupid to whine about one FPS that you probably don't even own or play. There is sure to be something else that matches what you want that you can support instead.
(2) Making assumptions about the future is silly. Maybe they will do that, maybe they won't. What you have RIGHT NOW is a game that is still fully functional, with a LOT of content and nothing cut that costs extra via the service.
Gamers on the internet are the whiniest bunch of unrealistic snobs I have ever seen. Even Valve charges people to put fucking hats on their models in their games. Games are a business and the companies are going to try and make money. Just be thankful that it's still way, way more cost efficient to be a gamer than it is for almost any other hobby.-
This is Activision. We've seen what they have done to one series (Guitar Hero), and as well as the fact that *any* scheme that gets more money from gamers, whether its something like COD Elite, EA's Online Pass stuff, or whatever, is readily picked up by the big publishers as a "good idea".
What's important to note is that while its 100% true that all the stuff that is extra cost above and beyond the price of the game is optional, these publishes have suggested that they would like to put more on the added services side. Heck, you can argue the Online Pass idea is already this: sure the SP game is fun, but if the bulk of the game's lifetime is the multiplayer side, that Online Pass becomes required.
The problem is not us here at the Shack. We're savvy gamers and recognize this.
The problem is the teenagers and the like that need their COD fix and will pass their money over faster than you can blink. They're much larger in number than the number of savvy gamers out there, and thus we have little choice in what's going to happen. They're going ahead on these plans even with journalists speaking ill of them, simply because they have a fixed captive audience.
Valve and hats are different. Has Valve ever charged (on the PC side at least - 360 pricing is different) for their game-expanding addons? Hats, on the other hand, are a way to customize avatars for a free game. Seems like the standard MMO microtransaction model, and that seems to be very acceptable to most.
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Oh fuck me. Now EA/Ubi/Activision will all try their own versions. And we thought DLC was bad...
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Is it wrong to say the throngs of COD fanboys have failed us yet again? $15 maps, many map packs released, now this?
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yup they are porting the same system to SSX too, Ridernet.
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The point I was making was how long will it take given MW3's success at this before EA and BF3 start charging?
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Starcraft 2 elite- see you w/l record for any ladder rank!
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the starcraft community is probably too smart for shit like that. they swallowed the no lan bullshit and battlenet 2.0 but if they try to pull a stunt like that i can see a migration to other games and genres like the dota stuff that is going on. activision blizzard have definitely planned some cod style bullshit the way the have set up battlenet and the map size limits but as you can see their own maps are garbage in comparison to the gsl and community maps and they have to thread lightly to not piss of their player base who is more "hardcore"/invested in the game and less inherently retarded as the dudebro/inbred cod player console base.
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They say there will be a lot more maps, like 1 a month, but I think that's bullshit. Those maps will still be bundled into packs for sale on Live and I say MW3 will get 2 map packs tops, just like MW2. Black Ops got more content but Treyarch wasn't as rushed as Sledgehammer and Infinity Ward were this time around.
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As someone who actually likes the Call of Duty games (multiplayer mostly), Elite is pretty cool when it works. The free part is comparable to the Halo stuff and paying $50 for DLC and extras is pretty nice considering I was going to buy it all anyways.
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