http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/05/31/confused-about-call-of-duty-elite-youre-not-alone/ http://kotaku.com/5806775/how-call-of-duty-elite-works-and-why-you-might-be-paying-for-it Wow, Activision seems to be putting in an extraordinary amount of effort to nickle and dime gamers. These articles refer to "Call of Duty Elite," which apparently offers some free and subscription based content. Yet, nobody knows what is free or not, or what Activision is going to charge. Kotaku says Elite will include stat-tracking, lots of social-networking options and a bevy of competitions, some of which will be organized like the season of a professional sport. First $15 for 4-5 map packs and now this. I hope BF3 blows this game out of the water.
Who cares. Screw Call of Duty. Real gamers know that Battlefield owns CODs sorry ass. Lazy gamers who just follow the herd out of convenience more than anything, end up playing Call of Duty. And it's just like all those idiots who are stupid enough to download some freeium craap and then pour tons on money into consumable IAP. It only works on the weak-minded. Kind of like the Jedi Mind trick.
I have both Battlefield: BC2 and Black Ops, and enjoy them both (BC2 is superior to BO, especially on PC), but it drives me nuts watching one of my favorite series get flushed down the toilet by Activision and IW. The original COD, COD2 and COD4:WM were fantastic and ground-breaking. But since Cod4:MW, it has turned into a repetitive franchise like the Madden series, Tony Hawk Series and the doomed Guitar Hero series. As for your comment about IAP, I don't like them either but to each his own. The thing that bugs me most about them is that I am a competitive gamer, and am not interested in games for which competitive advantage can be purchased.
If this works we can probably expect the "big thing" of 2012 to be subscriptions for every damn game we buy. Utterly shameful if you ask me, talk about maximum milkage. Activision are abusing CoD's popularity and using it to squeeze more money out of the very people it owes its success to in the first place. What a strange way to say thank you.
I'm not sure how in this day and age this is still a surprise to people, but Activision is a publicly traded company whose sole goal is to turn as large of a profit as possible. So, no, $1b in sales isn't good enough. Console games have already been trending this way for a while now with the online keys that you need to buy for $10 if you bought the game used. This is just the next step. Don't like it, don't buy it.
agreed a company wanting to make some money off of used games is reasonable. A company wanting to make more money off of a game that makes tonnes already is greedy. The worst thing of all is people will still do this. People buy the map packs which are way over priced so Im guessing theyll still pay for this. It does suck that COD is about money now and not about making a great game. I miss COD4
i dont think its that $1b is not good enough in sales, its just that they are trying to get as much profit as possible, so if this is done by the whole subscription process, then activision will do it. this is the company that has used the same game engine for 4 games after all... and the thing about this being the next step, i dont think so, as it online keys are alot different to subscriptions
