Call Of Duty Might See Paid Services

13 Nov 2009 at 10:51:46 by Tim McDonald

Activision has hinted that we may see paid services in titles other than World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft, of course, is a subscription-based game that allows a variety of additional services in exchange for cold, hard cash, from character name changes to server moves. When asked during the BMO Capital Markets Conference whether or not a similar online business model could be applied to other Activision franchises, CFO Thomas Tippl responded in the affirmative, according to IGN.

"It's definitely an aspiration that we see potential in, particularly as we look at different business models to monetise the online gameplay," said Tippl. "There's good knowledge exchange happening between the Blizzard folks and our online guys. We have great experience also on Call of Duty with the success we had on Xbox LIVE and PlayStation Network."

"A lot of that knowledge is getting actually built into the Battle.Net platform and the design of that," Tippl added. "I think it's been mutually beneficial, and you should expect us to test and ultimately launch additional online monetisation models of some of our biggest franchises like Call of Duty."

This is apparently down to you lot, too, with Tippl mentioning gamers are telling Activision that "there's lots of services and innovation they would like to see that they're not getting yet." Tippl added "From what we see so far, additional content, as well as all the services Blizzard is offering, is that there is demand from the core gamers to pay up for that." [sic]

Which one of you told them that?

There's no mention of what this might include, but this certainly sounds like what we heard back in June when we thought that Call of Duty was going to have a monthly fee. Thankfully, that turned out to be a load of rubbish.

Paid services could be a good thing, depending on what there is, but it doesn't sound like this'll be bog-standard DLC. Speculate away, readers. Oh, and have a read of our Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 review while you're at it. It's pretty bloody good.

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