14 DAY TRIAL // The features that will be a part of the Call of Duty Elite online service have been developed by Activision after an extensive batch of feedback from the massive community of Call of Duty players, at least according to the CEO of the company, Bobby Kotick.
Call of Duty Elite was showcased earlier this year as a bold new online service that will provide many new features to the tens of millions of Call of Duty players out there, both free and premium ones that will enrich the experience in the regular Call of Duty games like the recent Black Ops or the upcoming Modern Warfare 3.
As you can imagine, the service caused quite a lot of debate among players, but also a lot of interest, as there are over 2 million registered participants in the upcoming beta stage of Call of Duty Elite.
Kotick, during an interview with the Guardian, emphasizes that many features in Elite were suggested by players and that every part of the service was designed with the tens of millions of gamers in mind.
"We started out with a desire to give back to our players; we wanted to add capabilities that were the direct result of research conducted with our audience. We have tens of millions of players, and we went out to our audience and we solicited their thoughts and opinions on what would make the game - on a free basis - more fun to play."
Kotick says that Activision tried to implement plenty of free features, but premium ones are also present because of the investment the company is making in developing and bringing them to the actual players.
"So the bulk of what we've done is to create a free service that offers a whole host of new, interesting and well-differentiated capabilities that will get our audience really enthusiastic and excited about playing. There were also a certain number of things that our players wanted to see, with the recognition that those particular services would be costly for us to develop.
"And we spent a lot of time talking about what's a fair way to charge for what are premium services. In that regard too we got great audience feedback. So [Elite was based on] very well-informed research that goes deeper and is more extensive than anything we've done before."
Interest in Elite is quite high, with many players eagerly awaiting the upcoming beta stage of the service, which kicks off later this month, before its official release on November 8, alongside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.