Call of Duty to Get Multiplayer-Only Spinoff, Report Says

A brand new report from the analysts at Wedbush Securities says that Activision's extremely successful Call of Duty franchise will see the introduction of a multiplayer-only spinoff release, which will aid in the monetizing of the series.

Ever since Call of Duty: Modern Warfare broke the mold in terms of sales and multiplayer popularity, Activision has been rumored to be preparing a special release of just the multiplayer mode, which will charge players a monthly subscription, just like current MMORPGs like World of Warcraft.

Activision commented on these rumors time and time again, saying that multiplayer will never have a price in the series.

According to a new report from Wedbush Securities, however, the large games publisher is preparing to release a "second tier" of the online multiplayer.

"Activision remains a top pick, primarily due to the company's potential to create and monetize a second tier of multiplayer online gaming for its Call of Duty franchise," Wedbush analysts write in their January 2011 newsletter. "We expect this to occur during the first quarter of 2011."

Despite saying that multiplayer won't have a price, Activision revealed quite a few times that it wants to squeeze more money out of the Call of Duty series, not just when a new game is released or when new map packs are launched for those titles.

Activision boss Bobby Kotick stated a few months ago that his company is thinking about "the natural evolution of a property like Call of Duty into a massively-multiplayer environment."

Activision could take some heavy cues from sister company Blizzard, which has been successfully running the World of Warcraft online role-playing game for 6 years and has over 12 million paying subscribers.

It could also get some inspiration from Valve, whose Team Fortress 2 multiplayer-only first-person shooter has generated a huge amount of money since the introduction of microtransactions, thanks to the company's Steam infrastructure

Activision hasn't commented on the story as of yet, but considering the company's willingness to squeeze a profit, a multiplayer-only spinoff might be coming sooner rather than later.