VentureBeat » Call of Duty Elite

Contrary to popular belief, Call of Duty multiplayer engagement is still healthy (exclusive)

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:00:43 +0000

For some time, analysts have been predicting that the Call of Duty video game franchise would run out of steam and fall back down to earth. It has been the fastest-selling franchise for several years now, and sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops II topped $1 billion in the first 15 days of the current season. But based on Activision Blizzard’s statements about the number of hours of multiplayer games that players have banked, it looked like the engagement level had dropped for the title, according to analyst Atul Bagga at Lazard Capital Markets.

But that’s not true, according to data mined from Raptr, the gamer social network with more than 15 million players. Dennis Fong, the chief executive of Raptr, told us exclusively that total playtime to date for Black Ops II is comparable with the last two Call of Duty games released. The data are significant because Call of Duty is the biggest $60 video game franchise on earth, and predictions about how well it is doing have affected Activision Blizzard’s multibillion-dollar stock valuation.

“So contrary to various reports that this year’s game is in significant decline, it looks like it’s holding up very well,” said Fong.

During the first three days after the launch of Black Ops II this year, the total multiplayer playtime was 8 percent lower than last year’s Modern Warfare 3, according to Raptr. But it was 42 percent better than the original Call of Duty: Black Ops from 2010. And this year, Activision Blizzard has been more active about promoting higher engagement with the multiplayer community than it has been in the past. You could say it is doing that out of weakness, but the results are pushing the engagement above previous levels.

In the second week after the launch of Black Ops II, playtime spiked higher than in any past games. So after the first two weeks post-launch, playtime was 17 percent higher for Black Ops II versus Modern Warfare 3. Activision gave fans a “Double XP” weekend, where they earned more points for playing. On top of that, Black Ops II benefited during that time because it included the Thanksgiving Black Friday that elevated overall playtime.

Those two factors were absent with Modern Warfare 3, which launched two weeks before Thanksgiving. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around in 2011, Modern Warfare 3 playtime had already begun to decline. Black Ops II sales benefited from a higher number of Black Friday deals, and Activision had never done a Double XP weekend so early before. It has used the Double XP events to get players reengaged with the multiplayer game or help generate awareness for a new map pack.

“Perhaps Activision realizes that community engagement activities planned early actually increases Call of Duty buzz and drives new user acquisition,” said Fong. “This spike in activity will level out as we move further past the launch phase, but early signs is that Black Ops II’s playtime activity is settling within a typical range of activity for Call of Duty but better than what Modern Warfare 3 was doing.”

Raptr says that more promotions and community engagement activities are likely to keep playtime above past Call of Duty games, so it’s a bit early to determine long-term effect right now. The new game has a number of ways to keep the community involved, including livestreaming, sharing brag videos on YouTube, and the Call of Duty Elite gamer social network with large numbers of tournaments.

Black Ops II is also doing well based on another perspective that Raptr analyzes. A calculation dubbed “total playtime as a percentage of launch” shows that Black Ops II is holding up significantly better than Modern Warfare 3. In that respect, Modern Warfare 3 did not hold up as well compared with previous games in terms of total playtime as a percentage of launch.

Last year’s MW3 eventually settled at 20 percent, compared with launch over the following few months. Previous games were closer to 40 percent compared with launch. One of the big differences this year is that Activision made Call of Duty: Elite, which was a subscription service last year, into a free giveaway for fans.

Filed under: Games

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GamesBeat weekly roundup: Kixeye CEO calls out Zynga, new Xbox 360 dashboard revealed

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:15:35 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Kixeye’s chief executive officer calls out Zynga in the midst of an employee theft lawsuit, Microsoft reveals the new Xbox 360 dashboard, and the BioShock Infinite studio loses two more employees.

You’ll also find reviews for Skylanders Giants, the Walking Dead: Episode 4, Unfinished Swan, Happy Wars, Fable: The Journey, and Dance Central 3.

News:

Mobile News:

Wii U:

Previews:

Keep your Dance Central 3 party going with its SmartGlass DJ app (preview)

Reviews:

Tips and guides:

Interviews:

Pieces of flair:

Filed under: Games

Call of Duty Elite goes free as Activision charges only for DLC for Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Dean Takahashi — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 15:00:59 +0000

Activision Blizzard is making a big shift in providing free content for its most dedicated gamers. The Call of Duty Elite gamer social network service will become free with the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops II on Nov. 13. Players will enjoy Elite’s social features for free, but they will still have to pay for downloadable content such as multiplayer online game maps.

Players will be able to purchase four downloadable content (DLC) map packs during the coming year. They can do so on an à la carte basis or pay for a season pass bundle that provides a full year of content for $49.99. Previously, the map packs came for free for those who subscribed to Call of Duty Elite for $49.99 a year, but those who didn’t subscribe could pay for the map packs individually.

But Activision has decided that anyone who buys the Call of Duty: Black Ops II game should able to enjoy the non-DLC features of Call of Duty Elite. In an email interview, Activision said that it has sold 2.3 million Call of Duty Elite subscriptions in the past year.

“We’ve learned a lot in our first year of Call of Duty Elite, and we’re very proud that we over-delivered on our commitment of playable content to our premium members,” said Activision Publishing chief executive, Eric Hirshberg. “What we have realized is that several of the Call of Duty Elite services which are currently only available to our premium members for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 are things that would further unite, engage, and delight our player community. So we are going to make them free for Call of Duty: Black Ops II.”

Call of Duty Elite essentially takes a player and makes that person into a more serious gamer. Since those more serious players spend more money and sometimes become year-round fans, it makes sense to open Elite up to as many people as possible.

“We’ve come to the conclusion that Elite has more value as a community-wide platform to drive engagement and connectivity than as a paid-members only service,” Hirshberg said in an email interview with GamesBeat.

Call of Duty Elite’s new free service includes Player HQ, where players can track their Black Ops II multiplayer performance with rich game stats. That includes heat maps that show where you and everyone else dies on a map the most during a match. You can use Player HQ to track challenges and modify your player classes, using the new Pick 10 Create-a-Class system, where it’s easier to customize your soldier’s weapons kit for multiplayer.

Elite will also feature Clan HQ, where you can join an existing clan or start your own, invite friends, and take part in clan operations with digital prizes. The Elite service will have new Zombies Support, where you can track your performance in Zombies cooperative game play matches and compare it to others. And Elite TV will also be free for those who want to watch community shows or learn more about playing the game. You can stay updated via notifications sent to your email or phone.

The map packs for multiplayer combat and the Zombies cooperative game within the game are expected to debut in 2013 for $15 each or $49.99 a year on Xbox Live.

Hirshberg said, “For Call of Duty: Black Ops II, DLC Map Packs will be offered separately from Call of Duty Elite. The Season Pass will be a great way to acquire all four Map Packs at a discount, but if our fans would rather take it one Map Pack at a time, then we’ll offer each pack à la carte for anyone who wants it. What we aren’t doing is requiring a paid membership to access the great player services for Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and we’re thrilled to offer all of Elite’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II features to players for free.”

GameStop president Tony Bartel says, “Consumer anticipation for Call of Duty: Black Ops II is tremendous. We are seeing the highest pre-orders in history. With its current pace, this Call of Duty is on track to break records and is likely to be our biggest game launch of all time.”

Filed under: Games

Why Activision is making Call of Duty Elite into a free service (interview)

Dean Takahashi — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 15:00:04 +0000

Activision Blizzard is shifting gears and making its Call of Duty Elite paid service into a free service with the release of the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops II video game. In doing so, Activision will separate the Elite service — which offers enhanced social networking and community engagement for gamers — from the multiplayer map packs that Activision will continue to sell. Eric Hirshberg, chief executive of Activision Publishing, responded to our email questions about the change. Here’s a transcript of that email interview.

GamesBeat: Why is Activision doing this? Is it because Activision already monetizes Call of Duty users in another way?

Eric Hirshberg: For Black Ops II, we’re offering a season pass, and we’re still offering (downloadable content) DLC map packs à la carte. The best thing for our business is to keep our players engaged. What we’ve found, Dean, is that Elite offers a lot of really engaging services that were only reaching a portion of our community. We think that by making these services available to a much wider audience, it will be better both for our players and for us.

GamesBeat: This is good for the community. Is it true what they say about that? What’s good for the community is good for the bottom line?

Hirshberg: Absolutely. Our mission from the start with Elite was to make multiplayer a more social, more connected experience. And we accomplished that, but only for our premium members. So we’ve come to the conclusion that Elite has more value as a community-wide platform to drive engagement and connectivity than as a paid, members-only service. This is truly a win/win.

GamesBeat: Are you still investing heavily in new features for Call of Duty Elite?

Hirshberg: Yes. Elite is now an essential part of the game. In addition to carrying forward things like leveling clans and new Elite TV content, we are adding features like League Play, eSports, and other features, all with the goal of making Call of Duty a more connected, more social experience. You’re seeing a lot of multi-screen strategies now from the first parties, and Elite was sort of early to that party. We’re offering that connected experience for one simple reason: The more engaged we can keep our players with the game and their friends playing the game, the better.

GamesBeat: What has been the most popular Call of Duty Elite service?

Hirshberg: Well, beyond the DLC itself, I’d have to say it has been clan ops and competitions. Those are great examples of the kind of services that really drive increased engagement. So it only makes sense to make them fully available to a wider audience for Black Ops II, not just premium subscribers.

GamesBeat: Is it easier to sell map packs/DLC because they are tangible assets, compared to the less tangible services of Elite?

Hirshberg: We have sold over 2.3M Elite memberships. I think we’ve shown that people are willing to pay for services if those services are compelling. We’re not making this change because services are harder to market. We’re making this change because we think there is a greater benefit to making these services available to a wider audience.

Filed under: Business, Games

Battlefield 3 Premium’s success leads EA to plan more ‘premium’ services

Omri Petitte — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 22:01:33 +0000

Nearly 800,000 players signed up for the Battlefield 3 Premium service within the first two weeks of its launch, according to publisher EA.

In an interview with USA Today, EA Games head Patrick Soderlund said the numbers look “very promising” when compared to the company’s initial expectations. “We are very pleased with the performance so far,” he added.

For a one-time $50 fee, purchasers of Battlefield 3 Premium receive a slew of exclusive deals and content for EA’s popular military first-person shooter which has sold 17 million copies since its October 25, 2011 release on the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.

In addition to receiving all current and future expansion packs for the game (including the recently released Close Quarters), Premium owners get unique in-game decals for their weapons, entry to exclusive events, and conveniences such as stat resetting and server queue priority.

The purchaser amount roughly equals a gross of $40 million for EA.

By contrast, Activision’s rival Call of Duty Elite service, which offers a similar set of social tools and exclusive content to its members, reached 1 million paid subscribers within the first six days of its launch. As Elite’s (optional) subscription carries a $50 annual cost, that amounts to an approximate $50 million gain for Activision per year.

Premium represents the beginnings of an initiative by EA to bring similar services to its other major franchises, such as Crysis, Medal of Honor, and Need for Speed.

EA Labels president Frank Gibeau told GamesIndustry International in an interview that he believes Premium trumps Elite, saying, “We actually think Premium exceeds what Elite does — from a value standpoint, from a content standpoint, and longer term, we think we can bring more properties into that offering, and that’ll be great for business.”

Filed under: Games

Activision Blizzard’s quarterly earnings report predicted to shine come Wednesday

Rob LeFebvre — Fri, 04 May 2012 14:00:17 +0000

Activision Blizzard will report its first-fiscal-quarter earnings on Wednesday, May 9, after the market close. This will come two days after its arch-rival Electronic Arts reports its earnings, and the two together will paint a better picture of the grudge match between EA’s Star Wars: The Old Republic and Activision Blizzard’s flagship online game World of Warcraft.

Activision Blizzard will, of course, want to show that its juggernaut money-maker, World of Warcraft, has kept its status as king of the hill in the massively multiplayer online (MMO) space, while also proving that the hit Call of Duty franchise has financial legs with Modern Warfare 3, Black Ops II, and the new Elite multiplayer service.

Wedbush Securities’ analyst Michael Pachter expects Activision to report results at or above its current estimates for revenue, at an estimated $570 million with an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.08. This is higher than the consensus of other analysts, who expect to see revenues of $552 million and an EPS of $0.04. Pachter also expects to see an overall decline in Activision Blizzard’s publishing revenue of approximately 30 percent, better than that of the larger market decline of approximately 40 percent as reported by market-research firm NPD Group.

Pachter notes that this shortfall should be made up for with new Call of Duty Elite subscriptions (an estimated $22 million), the first Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 downloadable-content pack, and $30 million in accessories for Skylanders (a game with separately purchased collectible toys), which is not accounted for by the NPD Group.

Activision Blizzard share valuations dropped a bit on Thursday, closing at $12.66 per share, while remaining valued at approximately $14.31 billion. While this shows the publisher to be much larger than rival EA (valued at $5.26 billion), there are still factors that can affect even a big company.

Pachter points to an increasing reliance on Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, noting that the Activision arm continues to commit more and more financial resources to the military first-person-shooter (FPS) franchise, while Blizzard focuses more on the upcoming Diablo III, Starcraft II expansions, and its successful MMO. In addition, says Pachter, while the futuristic Black Ops II game should help the Call of Duty franchise maintain its market share, it could well succumb to FPS fatigue as the market continues to become saturated with similar titles.

Activision could, of course, exceed even these measured positive expectations. Pachter says additional success could come from the multiple releases by Blizzard, if Call of Duty packaged goods do better than expected at retail, and if the upcoming Skylanders expansion, Giants, outperforms the original game. Finally, Pachter predicts that Activision Blizzard’s stock price will go as high as $19.00 per share, which is about 16 times the company’s expected 2012 earnings per share.

Traditionally, Activision Blizzard has maintained a strategy of culling its titles ruthlessly to focus its resources on what works. While it maintains a leadership position in online console games, it hasn’t experimented as much as EA in the realm of social, mobile, and free-to-play online games. EA hasn’t had huge successes in those areas, but at least it has spent a lot of time learning lessons. Those new markets represent the big expansion opportunities in the games business, while the core console market — where Activision Blizzard focuses most — has been shrinking. How Activision Blizzard and EA manage these industry-wide transitions will determine who comes out on top in the long run.

Blizzard’s World of Warcraft has shown weakness in recent quarters, dropping to 10.2 million paying subscribers compared to past highs of around 12 million. The Old Republic may have taken some users away. But other online game worlds such as Trion’s Rift (which is soon bound for China) and En Masse Entertainment’s Tera are also likely to peck away at the big game.

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Filed under: Business, Games

Largest Call of Duty DLC collection hits Xbox Live today

Dean Takahashi — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:27:06 +0000

Activision Blizzard said today that its largest downloadable content (DLC) in history for a Call of Duty game is hitting Xbox Live today.

The company is releasing the new content both as two new Spec Ops missions and one new multiplayer map for Call of Duty Elite subscribers. But it is also releasing its full collection of DLC for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 for purchases as a separate collection for those who aren’t subscribers.

In the full “content collection 1″ package, Activision is including two Spec Ops missions and four multiplayer maps. That includes the previously released Liberation, Piazza, and Overwatch maps, as well as the new Black Box map.

I’ve played the new Spec Ops missions — Black Ice and Negotiator — and reported on them here. In Black Ice, you team up with another player on a snowmobile and make your way into a diamond mine, where you plant explosives and escape. In Negotiator, you have to free as many captives as you can with your partner and then hold off an enemy counterattack. The new Black Box map is a site where Air Force One has crashed into a Southern California hillside neighborhood.

Those who don’t subscribe to the premium version of Call of Duty Elite can buy the new collection for 1,200 Microsoft Points, or $14.99. Premium Call of Duty Elite players pay $49 a year and get access to all of the new content on a monthly basis. The DLC pack will be available on the PlayStation 3 and PC at a later date.

To celebrate the launch, Activision will pit football stars Ahmad Bradshaw of the New York Giants against Rob Gronkowski of the New England Patriots in a Grudge Match show.

Filed under: Games

Call of Duty Elite players go bananas for clan warfare

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 17:00:44 +0000

Call of Duty Elite is turning out to be a highly engaging social network for hardcore fans of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The online social network now has more than 670,000 clans, or groups of players who team up in multiplayer battles, according to Activision Blizzard’s Beachhead Studio leader Chacko Sonny (pictured center).

In an interview at the Game Developers Conference, Sonny said the numbers show that clan operations have become really big, as each clan can have up to 100 members. The clans are one of the primary ways to make the game “sticky,” since players who battle together for a long time are more likely to keep returning to the blockbuster game, which has sold an estimated 25 million copies and is the best-selling video game of all time.

With the clans, leaders can create uniforms with the group’s own national flag and other details so that each member of the clan plays with the same uniform in battle.

“It becomes like a soccer club,” said Noah Heller, product director (pictured right) of Call of Duty Elite.

Activision hasn’t shared the latest numbers for Call of Duty Elite. In February, the company said that 7 million players had signed up to become Elite subscribers since the game launched in November. Of those, 1.5 million had signed up to pay $49.99 a year to become premium members of Elite. That entitles members to get all of the downloadable content for free. The revenue from such subscriptions made a small contribution to Activision Blizzard’s digital revenue in 2011, which amounted to $1.6 billion. Full told, Elite will have 24 content drops in 2012. Content drops 4-6 are available today.

Call of Duty Elite was controversial when it was first proposed because fans feared that Activision would begin charging money for things such as multiplayer play that were previously free. The service also had a rocky launch. But now that it’s up and running, Activision believes gamers are coming around.

Heller said that clans were so popular that when Activision turned on the feature, 40 clans were formed in the first 30 seconds. That means users were constantly refreshing the page for forming clans as they awaited the new feature.

“They were hitting refresh, refresh, refresh just to be the first ones to form a clan,” Heller said.

Sonny said the service — which had a rocky start as the number of users overwhelmed Activision’s servers — is back on track and widely available to users now.

Clans can earn achievements and grow in levels over time. They can grow up to level 50, a number which shows when a user looks up a clan’s status. In one challenge, Activision had clans play the Domination version of the Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer game over three hours. At the end of it, they ranked the top six players. More than 25,000 clans with 200,000 players participated in the challenge.

Activision had to spin up a large live operations team to monitor the clans for possible cheating, Heller said.

“The clan operations are a way for players and teams of all capabilities to get in there and compete for bragging rights,” Sonny said.

The company has run a number of contests for both digital and real prizes now, giving away prizes such as iPads, Xbox 360s, and Astro audio headphones. So far this year, the company has run 300 competitions.

Jamie Berger (pictured top left), vice president of digital at Activision, said the company will soon start “100K days,” a monthly event where it gives away $100,000 worth of prizes to winners of competitions and events. The prizes will range from simple Modern Warfare 3 swag such as a hoodie to ATVs, Jeeps, or scuba diving trips.

“This is the kind of stuff that engages the really serious player,”

Activision is also rolling out more Elite TV shows on Call of Duty Elite on the consoles. Previously, it was a technical challenge to serve a lot of videos to fans. Map videos show players how to tackle each map. The videos feature things like celebrity grudge matches of TV stars Michelle Rodriguez vs. iJustine. A new season of Friday Night Fights, a challenge show directed by Ridley Scott, is in the works. Other shows debuting are Noob Tube and Cocked Hammers.

The new Call of Duty Elite mobile app for Android and iOS has been downloaded more than 2 million times, Berger said. With that app, players can set up their own weapons kits and save them so that they can use them in actual multiplayer games. Tablets support and a version 1.2 update are on the way.

“We tailored the app to the strengths of the mobile platform,” Sonny said. “And then we will apply the lesson to the tablet in the future.”

The company has plans to release a magazine called Drop Zone to describe the downloadable content. Several Activision studios — Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games, and Raven Software — are all working on new content, Berger said. Altogether, Activision will release 24 content drops this year for Call of Duty DLC, up from a planned 20.

The next major version of Elite will come with the next game, which will presumably be Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

Filed under: Business, Games, Social

Hands-on with the next Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 content drop

Dean Takahashi — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 17:00:57 +0000

The newest content drop for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is nearing its release. We’ve already played the add-on maps — check below to see what you’ll be able to experience as soon as March 20, if you have an Xbox Live account and a subscription to Call of Duty Elite.

Activision Blizzard is releasing a new “content drop” for the hardcore fans of the modern combat game each month. The latest follows the release of the Liberation and Piazza multiplayer maps in January and the skyscraper multiplayer map Overwatch in February. Each month, subscribers who pay $49.99 a year can unlock new downloadable content. This time, players who enjoy cooperative play will get a chance to try something new.

Black Ice

In the first mission of the March content drop, you and a partner play cooperatively in a Spec Ops mission called Black Ice (pictured at top). One of you drives a snowmobile through a treacherous mountain road while the other rides on back and shoots at the enemies who come at you on snowmobiles or on foot. It’s not easy surviving long enough to get to the diamond mine, and I had to do make this run multiple times before my partner and I made it.

Once you get to the mine, you and your partner have to work together to take out the enemies guarding it. You fight your way inside, using machine guns and grenades to clear the path. You have to get deep inside, following one of a couple of different paths. Then you have to plant high-grade explosives to blow the mine up.

Once you set the timer, you then have to escape on foot as rivals either try to stop you or run for their lives themselves. The mission is pretty difficult, as you first have to master the snowmobile combat and then you have to try to speed your way into and out of the mine with time to spare. Once you master driving, you can switch so that you’re the passenger.

Negotiator

In the second mission, Negotiator (pictured above), you are in the middle of India. You and your buddy are being held hostage. You have to sneak up on a guard and steal his sidearm. Then you shoot him, grab a weapon, and have to rescue your partner before he is executed. If you shoot a hostage, then you lose points in the co-op mission.

Then you and your partner have to work together to free other innocent people, sometimes by breaching through doors that you have to stand by at the same time. When you breach a door, the game moves into slow motion and you have to quickly shoot enemies in bullet time (slow-mo) while avoiding shooting the hostages. In the first such scene, I had to avoid the first enemy I saw because he was completely covered by a hostage. Instead, I shot at other enemies to the right and then brought my gun back to the first guard to finish him off.

After that, my buddy picked up a submachine gun, and so did I. We went on to take on enemies in the streets. In the middle of the road was a minigun, but it had very little cover. Using the minigun can help you take out a dozen enemies as they file through a narrow corridor. But you’re vulnerable out in the open, so it’s a risk-reward trade-off. The best thing to do is to toss a flashbang grenade to slow a bunch of enemies down and take them out with a frag before you move to the minigun.

This mission is very replayable because you have to complete it with the fewest hostages killed. And if your buddy gets shot, you have to move to him quickly to revive him or you lose the match.

Black Box

The Black Box map (pictured above) is a residential neighborhood in Southern California where Air Force One has crashed. In the survival mode battle, you have to try last as long as you can as you defeat one enemy wave after another.

At first, you and your cooperative player are equipped with just shotguns, but the enemies are also lightly armed. They can spawn from any direction, so it pays for you to stick together.

You can run through the multilevel homes or the lower and upper levels of the airplane fuselage. You can snipe at enemies from above, but it’s easy for them to come up the stairs and take you out.

If you survive one round, you get points to spend on replenishing your ammunition or upgrading to a better gun, such as a submachine gun. If you make it another round, you can replenish your grenades. And if you survive further, you can get air support such as a Delta squad to watch your back.

The variety of enemies gets harder and harder. One wave includes attack dogs who have bombs strapped to their backs. You can take out the barking dog before they get you, but then you have to get away from it or face the bomb explosion.

I survived long enough to meet a heavily armored Juggernaut soldier. I could have taken him out with an air strike or something similar, but he just gunned me down instead. This map also serves as the site for a new multiplayer map battle.

Conclusion

Overall, the content drop is a good one, but it would have been nice to have another multiplayer map so that the players won’t run out of content before the next drop arrives in April.

[Image credits: Activision Blizzard]

Filed under: Games

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Content Season kicks off on PlayStation 3

Stefanie Fogel — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 20:28:47 +0000

The first two pieces of downloadable content for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 are now available to Elite Premium members on the PlayStation Network, but not everyone is happy about it.

The new multiplayer maps, Liberation and Piazza, are the first of 20 DLC drops scheduled during Call of Duty’s 9-month-long Content Season. However, due to an exclusivity deal with Microsoft, PS3 owners have been left waiting for an entire month to access the content, even if they’ve paid for an Elite Premium membership.

Many CoD fans have voiced their displeasure over the situation on the game’s official community site. Some say the delay isn’t fair, while others say paying for Elite and not getting promised DLC at the same time as Xbox users is a scam. One member called Creeker writes, “I play on PlayStation and I paid just as much for my Elite as anyone on Xbox so I don’t see why they should get their map packs a month before I do.”

Patrickrh7 adds, “What I don’t get is, why the eff did you guys sell this Elite with the promise of not waiting so long for new content! When PS3 users are pretty much now waiting almost four months for two maps that we already know all about!!! This Elite package is a joke!!!“

Community site member D3TON1C sums it up with a simple, “this is bull ****!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -_- [sic]“

The latest Call of Duty Elite content drop, a multiplayer map called Overwatch, is scheduled to land on the PlayStation Network on March 29.

Filed under: Games

You’ll fall 70 stories if you lose in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Overwatch map

Stefanie Fogel — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:25:02 +0000

The third map in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3′s current content season is now available for Call of Duty Elite Premium members on Xbox Live.

Overwatch takes place in a construction site atop a New York City skyscraper, where battles will rage along two levels in a near symmetrical layout. A lack of safety barriers around the perimeter should provide plenty of chuckles for those who enjoy watching their enemies fall 70 stories to their deaths. The map is in the same general location of the New York setting in the single-player campaign, which depicts a world war in major cities of the globe. But it’s a fresh map for multiplayer fans.

Modern Warfare 3′s content season will ultimately include more than 20 pieces of brand new DLC over a 9-month period. The first maps, Liberation and Piazza, were launched last month. Another new map called Black Box and two new Special Ops Missions are coming in March. Call of Duty Elite Premium members on Xbox Live get first dibs on the content as part of an exclusivity deal Microsoft made with publisher Activision. PlayStation 3 and PC Elite members will get access to the DLC at a later date, while everyone else will eventually be able to download the content in a bundle pack.

You can see Modern Warfare 3′s full content season schedule here: http://www.callofduty.com/contentcalendar.

Filed under: Games

Call of Duty Elite: It’s not a douche move — Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg

Dean Takahashi — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:16:18 +0000

Eric Hirshberg, chief executive of Activision Publishing, talked about the role that creative people should play in making decisions about running a video game business. Too often, he said, creative people leave it to the business experts. But creative people shouldn’t sell themselves short, as Hirshberg learned in the last 18 months running the division that includes Call of Duty franchise.

With the launch of the latest Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Activision Blizzard (the parent company) made some controversial moves. One of them was to create the Call of Duty Elite social networking service for game fans. The service offered things like networking with friends, videos, service enhancements. But the controversial idea was that Activision wanted to charge a subscription fee for the premium version of the service. When bloggers heard about that, they revolted, Hirshberg said, because they thought that Activision would charge for things that used to be free.

“It’s a douche move,” said Neils Hansen (pictured on big screen below), a blogger who runs the Gunn Shop report on YouTube. He said he couldn’t believe that the company would alienate its core gamer base by charging money. He organized a protest to boycott the Elite service, even before he fully knew what it was.

“We had a summer of criticism,” Hirshberg said, speaking at the DICE Summit game conference in Las Vegas.

But Hirshberg said he believed from his creative background as an artist and advertising executive that games are not products, they’re brands. While people buy products, Hirshberg said, they “buy into brands.” That means that brands are a cultural phenomenon built around products such as games that inspire people to buy those products over and over again. By treating Call of Duty as a brand, Hirshberg said, the company could get away from the traditions that held that a game was a product that sold for $60. After all, in 2011, Call of Duty was a top ten topic of conversation on Facebook; it was the only entertainment brand with a product you could buy on the list.

To convince game players that there was a core Call of Duty experience, Activision created a campaign with the tag line, “There’s a soldier in all of us,” showing people of all sorts engaging in faux combat, as the weekend warriors who play games like Call of Duty. The company also created a service that players could buy into on a year round basis, delivering them new map content, vidoeos, shows, contests, and community features that could make Call of Duty into an ongoing experience, not just a product.

The company had a chance to turn around attitudes by appealing to the hardcore fans and the culture of Call of Duty. Activision then announced Call of Duty XP, a live event in Los Angeles where it would announce Modern Warfare 3 and Elite as part of a gigantic fan appreciation event. The event involved everything from paintball on a real Call of Duty map to eating at a Burger Town restaurant, which is a fictional chain in the Call of Duty games. The event was a huge success, generating $21.5 million in media impressions, 175 million Facebook impressions, 10 mil Twitter conversations, 9.8 million YouTube views, and huge livestream traffic.

Finally, at the Call of Duty XP event, Hirshberg revealed the price. It was $4.99 a month and it included all of the map packs that would normally cost gamers about $60 a year. It was a price that generated annual subscription revenue for the company. And Hansen, the Gunn Shop blogger, came back and said that he would eat his words and subscribe. It wasn’t, after all, a douche move. Activision could only accomplish something like this by establishing Call of Duty as a brand, guaranteeing gamers a unique experience, and getting the gamers to buy into the value of what it offers, Hirshberg said.

Elite had a rocky launch and it is far from perfect, he said.

“This is not a victory lap and we had technology stumbles,” Hirshberg said.

But the company has 7 million sign-ups and 1.5 million paying subscribers so far. That’s a success, and one that forced Activision to look to what it could learn from creative concepts, not just business ideas. The new tagline for Elite, Hirshberg joked, is, “Call of Duty Elite. It’s not a douche move.”

Filed under: Business, Games

Activision Blizzard earnings: Call of Duty Elite snares 7M subscribers

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:54:05 +0000

Activision Blizzard reported today that its new Call of Duty Elite social network service for hardcore gamers has signed up 7 million subscribers since going live in November.

That includes both free and paid memberships, and it represents a sizable chunk of the overall numbers of consumers who bought the game. About 1.5 million of those users have chosen to pay $4.99 a month for the privilege of getting the latest content for titles such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which was the biggest-selling game of 2011. A subscription to Elite costs less per year than getting all of the downloadable content coming over the next nine months at full price.

Digital revenues, such as downloadable content or the social network subscriptions, added up to $1.6 billion for all of 2011. That was more than 34 percent of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company’s revenues for all of 2011.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 players have logged more than 639 million hours of game time through Dec. 31. The total number of unique online gamers playing the game was 12 percent greater than the number for last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops. (I’m one of those Modern Warfare 3 players, with a ranking of 71, or Major General II, on multiplayer).

Eric Hirshberg, chief executive of Activision Publishing, said in an analyst conference call, “We have grown the Call of Duty franchise every year for the past eight years.” Modern Warfare 3, Black Ops, and Modern Warfare 2 are the top three most-played games on Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming service for the Xbox 360.

Hirshberg said that a new Call of Duty game will debut in 2012, repeating a pattern that has taken place every year in recent history. There are 40 million monthly active Call of Duty users, with more than 20 million for Modern Warfare 3 alone. Call of Duty China will also launch sometime soon.

Meanwhile, the company ‘s new Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure hybrid toy-game was a big success, with more than 20 million toys sold. Skylanders has more than 1 million registered users for the online version. A new version called Skylanders Giants is coming this year.

Filed under: Business, Games

PSN to get new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 maps on Feb. 28

Stefanie Fogel — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:40:51 +0000

Video game publisher Activision has announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3′s content season for Call of Duty Elite members on the PlayStation Network will kick off on February 28 with the release of two new multiplayer maps, Liberation and Piazza.

Liberation takes place in a militarized Central Park and features a landscape suitable for long-range sniper and LMG kills, while the Piazza map features blind corners and a complex network of branching pathways in an idyllic Italian village.

The maps were released on the Xbox 360 last month as part of an exclusivity deal the publisher made with Microsoft, a deal that is no doubt unpopular with many PlayStation owners, especially non-premium Elite members who will have to wait even longer than premium members to download the content.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3′s content season is being co-developed by Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games, and Raven Software.

Filed under: Games

Modern Warfare 3 DLC schedule revealed: 12 maps, 6 missions, 2 game modes

Dan Crawley — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:25:30 +0000

Activision has outlined its downloadable content (DLC) schedule for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 during 2012. There are 20 pieces of DLC due in total, which will be made available to Elite Premium subscribers over a nine month ‘content season’.

The DLC is key to Activision Blizzard’s ability to charge a monthly fee for its new Call of Duty Elite service. Premium members who pay $4.99 a month can get the “content drops” for free. Getting players engaged in year-round playing, rather than just buying a game once a year, is key to shifting the games to a service-based business model.

In addition to the Liberation and Piazza maps, released on Xbox 360 this week, there will be ten further multiplayer maps added to the game during the year. Activision has also revealed that there will be two new game modes appearing, one in June and one in August, along with a total of six new Special Ops missions.

This content will be released in 20 ‘drops’ for subscribers to the paid Elite Premium service, which costs $50 a year. Non-Elite customers will also be able to purchase the maps, which are being developed by Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games, and Raven Software, at a later date. The price for the standalone DLC has not yet been announced, but map packs, typically containing five maps, have previously cost $15, or 1200 MS Points.

The 2012 DLC calendar, at least for Xbox 360 Elite subscribers, is as follows:

January: Two new maps (Liberation and Piazza)

February: New map

March: New map, two new Spec Ops missions

April: Two new maps

May: New map, new Spec Ops mission

June: New map, new Spec Ops mission, new game mode

July: Two new maps

August: New map, new Spec Ops mission, new game mode

September: New map, new Spec Ops mission

While many PS3 and PC players are also signed up to the Elite service, there has been no official word on when they will receive their DLC. Microsoft and Activision signed an agreement in 2010, which gave all Call of Duty DLC timed exclusivity on the Xbox 360 platform, and this agreement is still in place.

When questioned on Twitter about DLC timing, Robert Bowling, Creative Strategist at Infinity Ward said, “I don’t control release dates, however I can assure [you] that every platform will get the same amount of content and months of content.” This lack of clarity hasn’t helped diffuse the anger of many PS3 and PC players, whose Elite membership has left them feeling anything but elite.

Dean gave his hands-on impressions of the new Piazza and Liberation maps yesterday. The official trailer for the two maps is embedded below.

Filed under: Business, Games

First downloadable Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer maps unleashed (hands-on)

Dean Takahashi — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:56:48 +0000

I just downloaded and played the new multiplayer maps for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. Since the game is the best-selling title of all time, you can bet that millions of other premium Call of Duty Elite members will do the same.

Such downloadable content (DLC) is becoming more and more popular, and the release of Call of Duty content is so big that it probably generates as much revenue (in the past, map packs sold for stand-alone prices) as a major game release. It gives loyal multiplayer fans a reason to subscribe to the Call of Duty Elite social network service, which offers free DLC to paying members.

And by bombarding players with DLC every month, publisher Activision Blizzard hopes to keep players in its game on a year-round basis, giving no breathing room to rivals that want to launch their own games and steal away Call of Duty players. Activision Blizzard hasn’t reported how many units it has sold, but it’s believed to be around 15 million.

The first new map is Liberation, which is set in a militarized Central Park in New York. This is the first of nine monthly content releases coming this year. And the maps are two of 20 expected content items coming during those releases.

Liberation has long sight-lines for snipers or light machines guns with stands. It is good for team games like Domination. It has a couple of gun turrets on either side of the map. That lets you hold down locations better. Those turrets It’s pretty eery to see the landscape of Central Park as a war-torn environment, which familiar places such as statues and buildings in disrepair. In Domination, you have to capture and hold three stationary flags on the map. Pitched battles take place for control of each flag. The map is cool in part because you can use underground or creek paths to sneak up on a flag, capturing it in a stealthy way. Like most of the maps in MW 3, this map is pretty well-balanced and it’s hard for one team to dominate all flags.

The other map is Piazza, set in an Italian seaside village. It has tight corridors and is a vertical map, where you fight up a series of stairs and multi-story buildings in the hillside town. It’s more like a run-and-gun game, where you just fire away with a submachine gun. But you need to have teammates near you to clear paths and watch your six. You have a lot of flanking maps. Bowling said that there will be monthly DLC content all the way through September, with new kinds of game modes and other content as well, Bowling said.

In a short match on Piazza, I saw a huge amount of action. I died 33 times and kill 15 enemies. That’s more than usual for a typical Domination game. I used a submachine gun the whole time and tried not to aim down my gun sites so I could be quicker. But my reaction times were just too slow. A couple of times, I was distracted by how beautiful the ocean looked in the distance and how nice the interiors of the buildings were. But I had to get back to work pretty quickly to avoid getting shot.

To get the maps early, you have to be a member of Call of Duty Elite and pay for premium content with a monthly subscription of $5 a month.

If you have a Call of Duty Elite subscription, get the maps by loading your game into the console. When the game is loaded, hit start. Select “multiplayer” and then “store.” Choose “download Elite content.” Select “confirm purchase” on both maps. Then you can go to “multiplayer.” Then go to Xbox Live and “find match.” You’ll see new “Elite maps.” You can go straight into the new maps by creating a private match with the new maps. If anything isn’t clear, look at the second video below.

To celebrate the new content drops, Call of Duty Elite will run specialized community screen shot events highlighting the new maps through the end of the month, with real-world prizes for winners. The maps are not yet available to PlayStation Network players or those who haven’t joined the premium version of Call of Duty Elite.

Filed under: Business, Games

Next 90 days of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 content unveiled, early access plan detailed

Stefanie Fogel — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:02:56 +0000

Two all-new multiplayer maps are coming soon to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 as part of the game’s “Content Season,” nine consecutive months of downloadable content co-developed by Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games, and Raven Software beginning on January 24.

Call of Duty publisher Activision today revealed that the new maps, Liberation and Piazza, along with five other content updates during January, February and March, will be made available first to members of its premium subscription service Elite on Xbox Live as part of the exclusivity deal the publisher has with Microsoft. Other platforms will get access to the content at a later time.

“Call of Duty Elite provides an ‛always-on’ connection to our fanbase, and the MW3 Content Season is the ultimate way to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to the Call of Duty community and provide tremendous value to Call of Duty Elite premium members,” said Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg. “With the Call of Duty: MW3 Content Season for Call of Duty Elite we are delivering on our promise of more new content, more often, and with more variety than ever.”

The two new multiplayer maps — also playable in Modern Warfare 3′s Survival Mode — take place in a war-torn Central Park and an Italian seaside village. Activision says the Liberation map is a vast, militarized landscape ripe for long-range snipers and LMG fire, while the Piazza map features tight corners and branching pathways suitable for close-range combat.

To celebrate the launch of each new content drop, the company says Call of Duty Elite will run specialized events for real-world prizes throughout the nine-month season.

While Elite subscribers get the new content first, Activision’s Dan Amrich says on his blog non-Elite members will be able to buy the maps later in bundles via the traditional DLC method.

Filed under: Games

Call of Duty Elite finally accessible via an iPhone app

Dean Takahashi — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:00:55 +0000

Game maker Activision Blizzard is finally launching a mobile app for its Call of Duty Elite service. Now fans of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 can engage with the game and the social networking service built around it via the iPhone, starting on Tuesday.

The iPhone version of the service includes a subset of the services available on the gamer social network, which has been available since November on the Xbox Live online service and the PlayStation Network. The mobile service was originally planned for November, but it was postponed as Activision worked through issues associated with having too many users at the outset. Activision has since caught up with the heavy traffic, rolling out the full console service and now the mobile app.

“We’ve always viewed mobile as a big part of the mission of Call of Duty Elite,” said Chacko Sonny, head of Beachhead Studios, the division of Activision that created the Call of Duty Elite service over the past two years, in an interview. “You can have your Call of Duty Experience be with you no matter where you are.”

As you can see in the screen at the right, the service lets you access a lot of the same information you can on the console versions. You can see your career stats in Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer and view your performance in recent matches — including heat maps that show where you got killed in the multiplayer maps.

One of the more social things you can do is look up the stats of a friend, as long as you know their game handle, or Xbox Live gamer tag or Sony PlayStation Network ID. You can drill down on the results of games and the scoreboards and then view the “player cards,” which have information about players in the matches.

The service also lets you edit your “custom classes,” or the kit of weapons that you take into battle. You can use the mobile app to edit your in-game loadouts (weapons, grenades, attachments and special capabilities). After you save the changes, the edited custom classes will show up the next time you log in on the console and play the game. This is where the mobile app allows you to influence the experience you have within the game.

You can also browse through the available multiplayer challenges and track them via the mobile app. And you can study what you still need to accomplish in the game, such as which weapons will earn you the most experience points.

This app is just the kind of thing that Call of Duty addicts need to get them through the day when they’re traveling or away from the console. You could be flipping burgers at your day job at Burger Town while looking at your Modern Warfare 3 stats in the other hand.

There are some things associated with Call of Duty Elite that you can’t do on mobile. That includes watching videos. Modern Warfare 3 is the most popular video game in history, with more than $1 billion worth sold in the first 16 days after it debuted on Nov. 8.

The iOS version is debuting on Tuesday and an Android version will follow a week later. You can use the iOS version on the iPad, but Sonny said that the company is also working on a tablet-specific version. More features will be added later on. The app is free and you do not have to be a premium paid member of the Call of Duty Elite service to use it. As for the Elite service overall, Sonny said, “The issues associated with the heavy load are behind us. The service is operational and lots of people are using it every day.”

Study: Modern Warfare 2 most addictive console video game

‘Call of Duty’ and ‘Black Ops’ top the list of video game searches on Google in 2011

Filed under: Business, Games, Mobile, Social

Xbox Live users unable to get online, linked to new dashboard update

Sebastian Haley — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:03:03 +0000

[Update: at 1245 am Dec. 7 -- Access to Xbox Live restored. Some features such as Zune and Xbox Live Marketplace having difficulties.]

If you were planning on getting the new Xbox Live Dashboard update today, you’ve either 1) got it, and can now rant about how much you love/hate it, or 2) run into an error message that prevents you from getting on the Xbox Live online gaming service at all. The latter seems to be affecting an alarming number of users, and has been for some time.

Don’t bother resetting your internet though, it’s not you. The error code, 3524 0000 0080 0200 8015 1909, appears when trying to connect to the premium Xbox Live service. Xbox Live’s Director of Programming Larry Hyrb tweeted, ”Some Xbox Live members are getting a connection error when signing in to Live. We are aware of the issue and the team is working it!” Users can also check the current status of all Xbox Live-related services, including Xbox Live itself, here.

Possible workarounds include trying to start a multiplayer game through titles like Battlefield 3, which will prompt you to sign in to Xbox Live (not all games prompt you automatically however, such as Gears of War 3). Others are reporting that repeatedly trying to find a “break” in the high volume of traffic eventually works, though neither is a sure-fire method. You can also download the update from Xbox.com to a USB drive and install it locally, but that still doesn’t ensure that you’ll be able to get online. Downloads of any other kind (DLC, trailers, etc.) from Xbox.com also seem to be disabled, currently.

We’ve reached out to Microsoft for an official statement on the cause and a more specific time for when they expect the service to be back online. Chances are the high number of people attempting to download the new dashboard has strained the servers and the issues should resolve as the night goes on, but when will these gaming companies learn? Battlefield 3, Call of Duty Elite, and now Xbox Live (again) have all suffered frustrating and embarrassing server outages recently.

About the update: Microsoft’s new Xbox Live dashboard comes with a redesigned interface that resembles the Metro interface in Windows Phone 7 smartphones. The block and tile interface can be controlled with a traditional controller or voice-commands via a Kinect motion-sensing system. The update is the biggest yet for the Xbox 360, and will also offer dozens of new movie, music and TV options in the coming weeks. You can read more about it here.

Filed under: Games

Saints Row: The Third stat tracker goes live — purple dildo kills 2 million

Dan Crawley — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:17:29 +0000

Players of Saints Row: The Third, the controversial open-world game from Volition and THQ, can now accurately measure the level of carnage they have created in the game, following the release of the stats and achievements tracker at the official website.

Stat tracking websites seem to be all the rage this winter, with EA releasing its Battlelog service alongside Battlefield 3, and Activision running its Call of Duty Elite service for Modern Warfare 3 players. THQ has now weighed in with its own stat tracking service that allows players to see their achievements, view and leave hints, and share screenshots taken in the game.

As well as stats, the website also features a map that tracks events in the game in real time, helping to show where missions and secrets are located.

THQ has taken this opportunity to reveal some rather disturbing figures from the game:

2 million people have been bludgeoned to death by the purple Penetrator “d-bat”, also known as an IED (Inspirational Erotic Device)
5.8 billion citizens of Steelport have met their demise at the hands of gamers around the globe while playing Saints Row: The Third. That’s 19 times the population of the United States, roughly 85 percent of the population of the world
Players have spent a cumulative two years in their birthday suits streaking the streets of Steelport
In Whored Mode, 44 million pimps, gimps and prostitutes have been dispatched, roughly twice the population of Texas
Finally, 650 hot dog mascots have been overcooked to death by players using a flamethrower.

We reviewed Saints Row: The Third earlier this week and gave it a score of 82 out of 100.

Filed under: Business, Games

Call of Duty Elite password reminders sent out in plain text

Dan Crawley — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 03:22:13 +0000

Activision’s troubled gaming service, Call of Duty Elite, has been sending out password reminders to its users in plain text.

Activision either stores player passwords on its servers in plain text format, or in some retrievable version, which makes the information susceptible to hackers if they found their way into the servers, according to a Eurogamer report.

Activision has insisted in a statement that: “All Call of Duty Elite personal data, including passwords are saved and stored using encryption.” It went on to say that “Call of Duty Elite does not store any sensitive data in plain text. Currently, the only time passwords are sent in plain text is upon request from the registrant and only to the registered email address.”

Most companies avoid emailing passwords in plain text format, as it presents far more risks than sending a password change request. Robert Siciliano, chief executive of IDTheftSecurity.com explains “systems where the user’s email is used to send a password change request that requires the user to enter a new password is much more effective and secure than transmitting an unencrypted plain text password via email.”

Activision has now responded to this issue, and promised to stop sending out passwords in plain text format. It is currently altering and testing its password recovery procedure to ensure passwords are no longer delivered in plain text — thus making the process more secure.

Earlier this year, Sony found itself in extremely hot water when the Playstation Network was hacked. The incident allowed hackers to steal customer passwords and credit card details because the data was not properly encrypted. This resulted in a lengthy outage for the service, and prompted Sony to beef up its network security.

Call of Duty Elite hit more than one million paid subscribers in six days following its launch on Nov. 8, but the service struggled to cope with this initial demand. Activision is now reporting that Call of Duty Elite has been stabilized, and although there are plenty of fixes still to come, users are now able to access the service and engage with it.

Filed under: Business, Games, Security

Activision says Call of Duty Elite service will be stable for Thanksgiving users

Dean Takahashi — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 19:59:41 +0000

Gamer social network Call of Duty Elite will be stable this Thanksgiving and for the subsequent holiday weekend, Activision Blizzard said today.

When the service debuted on Nov. 8 it had a number of issues that made it tough for users to connect. Now, the company says it has stabilized the service and can deliver all of its major features to both paid and free users.

“We are where we should have been at launch,” said Daniel Suarez, vice president of production at Activision in an interview today. “It should be an enjoyable holiday weekend for people.”

Call of Duty Elite hit more than a million paid subscribers in its first six days, Activision Blizzard said. It now has more than 4 million paid and free gamers registered. That was part of the problem, as demand for the service overwhelmed the company’s server infrastructure. Gamers were still able to play Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer, but the service for Elite wasn’t good.

Suarez said that the company has slowly been adding more users and more features to the service. On Friday night, the Elite TV section of the service will debut the first episode of Friday Night Fights, featuring an Army vs. Navy game competition. That is the last big remaining piece of the service to debut.

Meanwhile, Suarez said that Activision will have announcements of downloadable content coming soon. Users who pay a subscription fee of $50 a year are entitled to DLC for free. Normally, they would have to pay for content such as new multiplayer maps.

As we noted yesterday, the subscription numbers suggest Activision Blizzard is marching on its way to getting gamers to pay for Call of Duty on a year-round basis, deepening their engagement beyond a few weeks after a game launch.

Call of Duty Elite has the benefit of riding on the coattails of the most popular video game in history. Modern Warfare 3 sold more than $775 million worth in its first five days of sales, making it bigger than last year’s Call of Duty Black Ops debut.

Last week, Suarez told us in an interview that the company had been able to restore enough service to guarantee service for those gamers who have signed up for the paid service. But at least half of those who are using the free version of the service weren’t able to log in, so they were still seeing error messages when they attempt to get in. The Elite web site as of yesterday finally shows that the service is fully operational.

So far, 80,000 Elite clans have been created and that should probably pass 100,000 shortly. The service has had more than 3 million daily logins. During the past week, Activision started offering competitions for gamers. Suarez said the Beachhead Studios team continues to chase small bugs such as making sure that users get their entitlements for Founders status.

Suarez said the mobile app for Elite will be available next week.

“Every week, we have progressively improved,” Suarez said. “Everything is now up and running.”

Filed under: Business, Games

Call of Duty Elite hits more than a million paid subscribers in six days

Dean Takahashi — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:59:45 +0000

Activision Blizzard said today that its gamer social network Call of Duty Elite hit more than a million paid subscribers in its first six days. Since the launch of the service on Nov. 8 with the debut of the best-selling Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, more than 4 million paid and free gamers have registered.

Still, the launch hasn’t gone as well as it could have because the company was overwhelmed by a huge number of registrations and other issues that brought down the service, forcing Activision into an embarrassing apology to gamers. Now the company says it is stable enough for gamers to try it out as they wish.

Activision Publishing said today that premium subscription services for Netflix, Hulu Plus, Sirius XM and Xbox Live each took about a year to hit a million paid subscribers. The numbers suggest that Activision Blizzard is marching on its way to getting gamers to pay for Call of Duty on a year-round basis, deepening their engagement beyond a few weeks after a game launch.

Of course, Call of Duty Elite has the benefit of riding on the coattails of the most popular video game in history. Modern Warfare 3 sold more than $775 million worth in its first five days of sales, making it bigger than last year’s Call of Duty Black Ops debut.

But while gamers were able to play the multiplayer version of the game, the servers for the Elite service have been spotty. Daniel Suarez, vice president of production at Activision, told us last week in an interview that the company had been able to restore enough service to guarantee service for those gamers who have signed up for the paid service. But at least half of those who are using the free version of the service aren’t able to log in, so they were still seeing error messages when they attempt to get in. The Elite web site still shows that service is intermittent.

As of last week, Activision had begun to add some services such as game statistics. Beachhead Studios allowed users to start setting up their clans, and 22,000 clans were created in the first 12 hours after that feature was restored. Now, more than 80,000 Elite clans have been created, 100,000 user-generated videos have been updated, and the service has had more than 3 million daily logins.

“The response to Call of Duty Elite’s premium service has been beyond our expectations and we thank Call of Duty players around the world for their unprecedented enthusiasm,” said Bobby Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard, in a statement. “The number of gamers who have registered for Call of Duty Elite further illustrates how this service is poised to redefine social gaming and set a new bar for interactive entertainment.”

Eric Hirshberg, president of Activision Publishing, said today in a statement that for “the first several days, the service did not perform up to our or our fans’ standards” — although it was actually a couple of weeks, not just days. He thanked the fans for their patience and said the service is now stable for those who want to try it. Activision has given those who signed up for Elite’s premium service an extra 30 days at no charge. The cost for a year of membership in the paid version is $49.99.

Filed under: Games

Update: Activision is slowly nursing Call of Duty Elite online network back to health

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:00:21 +0000

Activision Blizzard is slowly bringing the gamer social network Call of Duty Elite back to life. The service was supposed to launch last week with the debut of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. But the company was overwhelmed by a huge number of registrations and other issues that brought down the service, forcing Activision into an embarrassing apology to gamers. Now it’s slowly adding more users.

During this time, gamers have been able to play the multiplayer version of the game, but the servers for the Elite service have been spotty. Daniel Suarez, vice president of production at Activision, said in an interview that the company has been able to restore enough service to guarantee service for those gamers who have signed up for the paid service. But at least half of those who are using the free version of the service aren’t able to log in, so they are still seeing error messages when they attempt to get in.

Activision has begun to add some services such as game statistics. Beachhead allowed users to start setting up their clans, and 22,000 clans were created in the first 12 hours after that feature was restored. But the company hasn’t been able to restore every feature to the service, since each time it restores a feature the usage puts a strain on its backend databases. Those databases have been the weak link in the service so far.

Suarez said that the company is now able to add tens of thousands of user registrations per hour, so that isn’t a bottleneck like it was on the first day. The lack of progress has been frustrating to gamers who want to access data such as their career stats and competitive opportunities. The delay is embarrassing for the company because it billed Elite as a way to deepen gamer engagement on a year-round basis for the Call of Duty games.

“Registrations are OK now,” Suarez said. “The next thing is to get more people into the service and we are doing that hour by hour.”

Suarez said that Activision is not asking gamers to pay for subscriptions so that they can get into the service.

“I don’t want to create the perception that we are forcing people to pay at all,” he said. But the company is still forced to prioritize and it is allowing paying users or those who bought the Hardened edition of the game into Elite first. “In the next week to two weeks, we will be able to open the service up to all free users.”

To communicate with users, Suarez has been doing interviews with the press when new things develop, and the company is making status updates on a web site and on its Twitter account @CallOfDutyElite.

All game play data is safely stored in separate gaming servers. Activision Blizzard is extending the period for signing up for Founding Member status for the paid version ($49.99 a year) by 30 days. That means players who sign up now can get an extra month free, as their memberships will expire at the end of December a year from now.

Those who signed up to receive Founders’ status will be able to get their in-game benefits once they are able to log in. The mobile app is still offline as the company won’t start that up until it can be sure that it will work properly.

Suarez said that the company is still working on providing a free service for players who play the game on the PC. Those players will have access to stats and group features, but Activision is not planning to create a paid premium service on the PC.

Suarez said the team has postponed the launch of the web service for PC game players, mainly to ensure security for statistics. Suarez said that the entire Beachhead Team, Demonware, and Activision teams are all hard at work on restoring service.

As we noted before, Beachhead Studios worked on the Elite service as a social network for all things Call of Duty for more than two years. The goal was to integrate the service deeply with Modern Warfare 3. Since Activision Blizzard dedicated a full studio to Elite, it is considered a major investment.

Even before the launch of Modern Warfare 3, the Call of Duty community is already one of the strongest there is. More than 30 million people have played online this year and 20 million players play each month. On average, the Call of Duty player plays 170 hours of the game per year. That’s as much time spent as watching the full series of the Sopranos and Lost, combined.

Suarez said that the first competition among Elite members will be held next week and the first Friday Night Fights video will debut on the Elite TV part of the service on Nov. 25.

“We are making progress as we speak,” he said. “We know there are a lot of people who can’t get in.”

Filed under: Games

Activision “cannot guarantee” Call of Duty: Elite for PC

Stefanie Fogel — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:05:50 +0000

Things are not looking good for the PC version of the Call of Duty: Elite social network. A tweet on the service’s official Twitter page is casting doubt on whether or not it will ever launch on the platform.

The tweet said, “We are working towards a universal Elite experience but we cannot guarantee if or when a version will be available for the PC.”

Call of Duty: Elite for PC was scheduled to launch on Nov. 8 with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, but was delayed due to issues with data security. The console version, which launched on schedule, has been plagued by outages. In a recent post to Elite members, Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard apologized for its rocky start and explained that greater than expected demand is crashing its servers. The publisher says Beachhead Studios, the developer charged with creating and operating Elite, is working to deploy additional servers to beef up the system.

The launch of Modern Warfare 3 set an all-time record by selling over 6.5 million copies and generating $400 million in revenues in its first 24 hours, according to Activision Blizzard. Elite was designed as a way to further monetize the Call of Duty franchise by offering premium services such as downloadable content and prize-winning tournaments for an annual membership fee of $49.99. Those premium services will not be available on the PC, however, and Elite will be free for gamers on that platform…if it launches.

VentureBeat has contacted Activision Blizzard to try to verify the status of Call of Duty: Elite for PC. [Update: Kyle Walker, a spokesman for Activision, said in an email, "Point of clarification, as we misspoke. The goal has always been to provide a PC offering for Elite. The timing for that free offering is still being determined, so stay tuned for news on that."]

Filed under: Games, Social

Activision posts update on Call of Duty Elite service woes

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:47:43 +0000

Activision Blizzard posted an update on the service woes for its gamer social network Call of Duty Elite. The service was supposed to launch on Tuesday with the debut of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. But the huge number of registrations and other issues brought down the service and users have had trouble accessing it ever since.

The outage has been frustrating to gamers who want to access data such as their career stats and competitive opportunities. It hasn’t affected the ability for users to play the multiplayer version of Modern Warfare 3, but it is embarrassing for the company because it billed Elite as a way to deepen gamer engagement on a year-round basis for the Call of Duty games.

“We are having trouble scaling the service to meet demand,” the company said in its post. “Many of you are trying to get in and, unfortunately, you can’t right now. You’re frustrated, we know it, and we know we need to fix it.”

The post explains that registration and login systems were crushed by too many gamers signing up at the same time. That part has now been fixed. But high demand is still crashing servers. The company is deploying more servers, but it has to temporarily limit access to Elite services on the console and web site applications in the meantime.

The update is similar to what Daniel Suarez, vice president of production at Beachhead Studios, told us yesterday afternoon. The post reiterates that users will not lose their career stats from playing Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer. All game play data is safely stored in separate gaming servers. Activision Blizzard is extending the period for signing up for Founding Member status for the paid version ($49.99 a year) by 30 days.

Here’s the full text of the update below:

ELITE SERVICE NOTICE
Latest update: November 10th, 7:30AM PST

Since Tuesday’s launch, Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer has been working great. In fact, the amount of players online is even higher than what it was this time last year for Black Ops. Have fun — we hope you continue to enjoy MW3 to the fullest.

However, on Call of Duty Elite, we are having trouble scaling the service to meet demand. Many of you are trying to get in and unfortunately, you can’t right now. You’re frustrated, we know it, and we know we need to fix it. Our teams have been working non-stop to identify issues and resolve them as quickly as possible. Again, these issues have no impact on the performance of the game.

We want to share with you what we know at this time and what we are doing:

At launch, our registration and login systems were crushed by gamers trying to enter the Elite site at the same time. We have now fixed the registration and login systems, but we have found that the greater than expected demand is crashing servers. We’re immediately deploying multiple additional servers to beef up the system. We are also going to temporarily limit access to Elite services on both the console applications and website while we build additional capacity and scale. We’ll look to increase access to greater numbers of users as soon as possible.

As more users log into the Elite system, you may find that the wait to get into Elite is longer than you expect. We know how frustrating that is and we appreciate your patience. Many of you are now able to see your player card and stats, but if you don’t see all your recent matches or career summary, don’t worry — your gameplay data for your entire careers in both Black Ops and MW3 is safely stored, and it will all be available to you once these issues are resolved.

And for our premium members who are Founders, know that granting your status and delivering your in-game benefits in MW3 is a priority. Also, to ensure that every premium member receives their full money’s worth, we are immediately and automatically extending your membership to Call of Duty Elite by 30 days at no additional cost. If you’re still considering becoming a premium member, we’re going to extend Founder eligibility until the end of the month, and you will also receive the additional 30 days of access.

The Call of Duty Elite team will keep you updated at callofduty.com/elitestatus. Continue to check back here for overall Elite status or for a complete list of FAQs, check out our customer service site. We will also give you updates regularly through the official Twitter account, @CallOfDutyElite. Our top priority and sole focus is delivering the best possible service experience to our gamers and we’re sorry we’re off to a rocky start with Elite. We will not rest until Elite delivers the full set of features we promised you. We are committed to Call of Duty Elite for the long haul and are working around the clock to resolve these issues. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Filed under: Games, Social

Call of Duty Elite team still tackling startup problems

Dean Takahashi — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 22:43:21 +0000

Activision Blizzard‘s Beachhead Studios is still tackling problems related to an overflow of registrations for the new Call of Duty Elite social network.

[Update: See the latest Activision statement on the service woes]

The service is aimed at hardcore Call of Duty fans, and it launched on Tuesday with the debut of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, which is expected to be one of the best-selling video games of all time. But too many people tried to register for the Call of Duty Elite service and brought the network down, said Daniel Suarez, vice president of production at Beachhead Studios, in an interview with VentureBeat. The multiplayer game service has been unaffected and gamers are able to play online without issues.

The registration challenge has been met, thanks to round-the-clock work. But now the challenge is to keep the service up and running as more and more people try to get into it. The result is that for most people, the service is down. That goes both for the full-featured web service — which you use to access your console game data — and the console-based online network service as well, Suarez said. Some people are actually getting into the service, primarily to look at their multiplayer game stats on the Career page.

“We built a football stadium. On day one, everyone was coming to the stadium at once,” Suarez said. “Now we’ve got the parking lot open and are trying to get people into the stadium. We are trying to get the site stable. We have never done it at this scale.”

Suarez added, “We knew there would be a tremendous amount of traffic. It was a lot more than we anticipated. The site has been intermittent in supporting users. We are slowly bringing it back up and testing it properly. Day by day, we find different areas that are the bottlenecks and address them.”

More information will be available from the @CallofDutyElite Twitter account. Beachhead Studios wasn’t totally unprepared. It tapped Amazon’s cloud services so that it could rapidly scale up or scale down the amount of computing power that it has to handle the service. That isn’t the problem. Rather, it is getting the service to work properly.

Suarez reassured worried gamers that their stat-tracking will not be lost. The Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer servers are independent of the Call of Duty Elite system. Those multiplayer servers are capturing all of the stats, such as the number of wins, losses, kills and deaths for each player. At some point, users will be able to access that information on Elite and learn how to improve their game play, based on statistical analysis of their historical performance. Elite taps into the multiplayer servers to access the stats.

Suarez said the team has postponed the launch of the web service for PC game players, mainly to ensure security for statistics. He also said that the mobile app, which allows you to view parts of the Elite service, has also been put on hold until the service is back up.

Suarez said that both the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live services were equally affected by the Elite service outage.

“There is no bigger priority within Activision than to get the fans the service we built for them,” Suarez said.

Our review of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is here. We’ll be posting soon on the multiplayer part of the game.

Activision Blizzard has said that this service is a way to keep hardcore gamers happy year round, not just for a few weeks a year after they play a game. Gamers can access most of the service for free, but Activision Blizzard is charging $50 a year for subscriptions to the premium version of Elite.

Filed under: Games

Activision CEO on making Modern Warfare 3 the biggest launch ever

Dean Takahashi — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:51:45 +0000

Activision Blizzard hopes its new Call of Duty game will help the company break all sales records for the third year in a row, Chief Executive Bobby Kotick said in an earnings call today.

The call was related to Activision Blizzard’s decision to raise estimates for the fourth quarter as a result of stronger-than-expected results for the overall company and its new big game, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.

“It was the largest launch in the history of Activision,” Kotick said.

Eric Hirshberg, president of Activision Publishing subsidiary, said in the same call with analysts Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is on track to be the most successful Call of Duty game ever. Last year’s Call of Duty Black Ops sold more than 20 million copies, and the company also said it sold more than 20 million map packs. Those map pack sales on their own would rank as the year’s third most-popular title, Hirshberg said.

The company raised its earnings estimates for the third quarter because sales of Modern Warfare 3 were ahead of expectations, with pre-orders for the game significantly ahead of the record-setting pre-orders for Black Ops.

The game launched at midnight in more than 13,000 stores around the world. Hirshberg said the company could not be more pleased with game reviews (we ranked it at 93), with average ratings coming in at 90 out of 100 on Metacritic.com.

Kotick referred to the Facebook-like Call of Duty Elite social network that debuted yesterday as a “next step in social connectivity.” But the Elite service, which provides socialization and stat tracking for Call of Duty fans, was down because too many people signed up for it. Online multiplayer gaming functioned normally on the first day, however, Hirshberg said. More than 1 million players have registered for Call of Duty Elite (both free and paid) already, and Hirshberg said the Beachhead Studios team is working hard to keep up with all of the registrations.

Hirshberg said it took a year before Xbox Live and Netflix reached a million paying subscribers. With Call of Duty Elite (which has a free version and a paid $50 a year version), Hirshberg expects to hit that number a lot sooner than a year.

Hirshberg said that 1.5 million gamers stayed up until midnight to buy the game, but he did not disclose the total number of first-day sales.

“It shows that the fan base is more engaged than ever,” Hirshberg said.

The company didn’t say which games were coming next, though it is working on a new Call of Duty game for 2012 and it is also working on an online version of Call of Duty for China.

Hirshberg said that there are now more than 92 million owners of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles in the U.S. and Europe. That is helping fuel demand for high-end games like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.

In other news, Activision Blizzard said that digital revenue was $386 million in the third quarter, a new record, and up 25 percent from a year ago. Overall, digital revenue from online games such as World of Warcraft is now about 38 percent of total revenue and more than 50 percent of operating margins.

Hirshberg also said that the Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure toy-game hybrid has sold more than expectations. He didn’t give a number, but said that millions of toys are now in the hands of kids and that all retailers have placed reorders for the product, which is prominently displayed in interactive kiosks in retail stores. The launch has been accompanied by a huge marketing campaign with TV commercials and movie theater ads.

Activision Blizzard closed the quarter with $2.9 billion in cash.

Filed under: Business, Games

Call of Duty Elite struggles with too many first-day users

Dean Takahashi — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:36:43 +0000

Call of Duty Elite, the gamer social network for Call of Duty fans, isn’t off to a great start. The Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 online multiplayer gaming service is working fine. But Activision Blizzard acknowledges that it is facing some issues as it copes with a surge in demand for the service.

[Update: See our updated story for the latest information on Call of Duty Elite's startup difficulties].

“Registration requests for our new live service Call of Duty Elite are exceeding even our most optimistic expectations, which is creating a bottleneck and some players have not been able to register,” Beachhead studio head Chacko Sonny said in a statement. “We have already registered hundreds of thousands of players and we are working around the clock to increase our capacity as quickly as possible.”

More information will be available on @CallofDutyElite on Twitter for status updates. If users have registered, their statistics will still be tracked even if they cannot access Elite. Our review of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is here.

I had no problem getting in to access Call of Duty Elite and seeing my own play statistics. But I haven’t yet tried to sign up for the premium service.

Beachhead Studios worked on the Elite service as a social network for all things Call of Duty for more than two years. The goal was to integrate the service deeply with Modern Warfare 3. Since Activision Blizzard dedicated a full studio to Elite, it is considered a major investment.

It’s too bad that the service isn’t working perfectly at the start, since Activision Blizzard has said that this service is a way to keep hardcore gamers happy year round, not just for a few weeks a year after they play a game. This hiccup follows news that the Elite service for the PC has been delayed beyond the launch window of Modern Warfare 3.

It’s not a good showing, but at least gamers are able to play multiplayer online. Activision Blizzard is charging $49.99 a year for subscriptions to the premium version of Elite.

Right now, users upload their best antics, home-made movies, and accomplishments — such as the “Tomahawk kill of the day” in the game to YouTube. Those videos have been viewed 75 million times already. Now the social network will be able to draw attention to those videos far more easily via its Elite TV section.

The service’s menus focus on four main concepts: career, connect, compete, and improve. With the “career” tab, you can see your own aggregate performance stats. You can see each player’s “kill/death ratio,” or the number of times the player has killed another or been killed. You can browse through the data from every match you have played. There are metrics on everything, such as your accuracy rate firing the Famas assault rifle on a particular map.

Under “connect,” players will be able to form their own groups based on interests. Players can join up to 64 groups, such as a group dedicated to Bay Area fans of the San Francisco Giants. The groups allow you to compete in a smaller social circle rather than try to beat people who have superstar status on overall leaderboards. In the groups, you can keep tabs on the stats of your friends and do a direct comparison between your own stats and your friends’.

Players can only play in one clan, which is a single team dedicated to multiplayer combat. There can be as many as 128 players in a clan.

Within the “compete” menu, players can compete in leagues or “operations.” The latter are events where players try to be the first to do something, like get five long-distance kills with a ballistic knife. You can also compete by uploading the funniest screen shot. In these kinds of competitions, even casual players like me stand a chance of winning a prize. Prizes will include new Jeep vehicles.

Filed under: Games

Call of Duty Elite gamer social network delayed on PC

Stefanie Fogel — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:47:49 +0000

It looks like the Call of Duty Elite gamer social network for the PC will not be ready in time for the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 on Nov. 8, according to the One of Swords blog created by Activision Blizzard.

In a Q&A with Activision social media manager Dan Amrich, Beachhead Studio Head Chacko Sonny cites data security as the reason for the delay. Without a central server hub to store statistics, many of Elite’s competition features will become unfair, he says. Beachhead Studio, a division of Activision Blizzard, is in charge of creating Call of Duty Elite and has been working on it for two years.

“We’re as committed as ever to the PC, but the need to ensure a safe PC environment is greater than ever,” Sonny said. “It’s really extensive. We need more time to get there, so Elite on PC will not launch on Day 1. We’re working our butts off to make it happen, but we won’t release it until we know that PC gamers can enjoy Elite as it’s meant to be.”

Call of Duty Elite is a new online service designed to enhance the franchises’ multiplayer experience through stat tracking, organized tournaments, additional game content and more. Some of its features will be free of charge, while others will be offered through a premium membership. PC users, though, will be able to use the service for no cost once it launches. ”Elite for PC will be about access to your own stats, or those of your friends. Basically establishing a circle of trust,” said Beachhead Studios’ Product Director Noah Heller. “And because it will have some reduced functionality, it will be free for everyone.”

Filed under: Games