The most hardcore fans of the Call of Duty franchise might not be too pleased with the announcement of Elite, the subscription-based service that will be launched this fall, but to the Activision executives who have thought up the idea, it's important to deliver a new service that, in some ways, turns video gaming closer to sports when it comes to bringing in new players and coaching them.
Jamie Berger, who is the vice president of digital strategy working at
Activision Blizzard, has stated, “Gaming has never built that kind of infrastructure. We’ve never embraced that broad community and said that everyone should have an opportunity to compete and join clans – not just the core gamers.”
Elite will have a Groups feature that makes it simple to find other gamers in a player's skill range to play with and there's also a tracking system that shows the player how he has done during the last match and allows him to develop the abilities he needs to perform better in the future.
Berger added, “I think the idea that most Call of Duty players are 16 to 35-year-old males might have been true a few years ago, but when you think that we have 30 million players worldwide, the reality of the diversity within the Call of Duty community is astounding.”
Call of Duty has consistently been providing the best-selling video game launch for the last few years and with
Modern Warfare 3 that could happen again this year.
It seems that Elite is thought as a good way of making sure that a large number of those who pick up the game and only engage in the single player have the tools and the ease of access needed to also develop a long-term commitment for multiplayer.
On July 14
Elite goes into beta and more than 2 million players have already signed up for it.
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