Activision has been busy hyping up its upcoming Call of Duty Elite service add on for its popular action gaming franchise. What should we be expecting to get from the service though?
Recently, an executif over at Activision suggested that Call of Duty Elite will be the “best free games service ever made”, a bold statement to say the least. Considering that other great and mostly free services already exist for gamers, such as Steam on the PC, and of course Xbox Live for console gamers, Call of Duty Elite runs the risk of being nothing more than a forced addition to already established gaming services.
Call of Duty Elite will involve both free and premium components offering gamers advanced stat tracking, access to competitions and video recording and editing options. It isn’t clear yet which components will be free and which will be listed as premium however. If we consider that Call of Duty: Black Ops already has very good stat tracking, and free video recording, editing and uploading is nothing new, one has to wonder what the premium service will offer.
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick wants to assure us that the features offered in the premium package will be something that gamers not only desire, but will be willing to pay for. He states that countless hours have gone into research and community forums to find out how they can make Call of Duty Elite the perfect package. However, we should remember that this is the man who once said that if he could make Call of Duty require monthly paid memberships he would do it in a heartbeat.
While few people could argue that Activision is being run like a ruthless corporation these days, they nevertheless deliver thrilling, if formulaic, games.
At launch, the service will support both Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and there are plans to potentially extend the service to past Modern Warfare titles if all goes well. Provided that the service will not remove free access to already existing features, then it will likely help tie in all the communities together.
So, will it be worth it? That’s the big question. Call of Duty players have been getting quite a lot for their money as is, will premium features go that extra mile? What about the side by side existence of free and premium features? Flagship Studios tried that on the PC for Hellgate: London and that experiment failed miserably.
At this point, only time will tell. The best we can hope for is that Activision has some genuinely great features to offer us, regardless if we want to pay a premium or not.
Be sure to stay tuned for more updates on Call of Duty Elite when we get them.
For more Call of Duty reading, check out Call of Duty Convention in the Works and Best Classes of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.