14 DAY TRIAL // The Chief Executive Officer of the Activision Publishing division has said that the Call of Duty series of first person shooters has more players who are ready to pay in order to play online multiplayer than all the games launched on the Facebook social network and that those players are also more engaged with the game.
Eric Hirshberg made the claims at the 13 edition of the Pacific Crest Global Technology Leadership Forum, aiming to offer an explanation about why Activision was not entering the Facebook gaming market and was instead focusing on developing its AAA franchises.
Examples given by the CEO include the Call of Duty Elite subscription based service for Call of Duty and the Spyro themed Skylanders MMO.
Hirshberg has said that, “Call of Duty has more players who pay-to-play online than any Facebook game and our players pay more per player on average than any Facebook game. They're also more engaged - the percentage of Call of Duty's monthly unique players that play the game every day is higher than that of the top three Facebook games.”
He added, “Despite all the hand-wringing in our industry right now, people aren't gaming less. In fact, they're gaming more than ever. They're just doing it with fewer games, and they're spending more time playing those games than ever before.”
Gamers now have more opportunities than ever to play for free or for a small fee and Facebook is home to a lot of them.
On the other hand more hardcore players are not looking at cost as the main reason to engage with a game but at who else is playing and here Call of Duty clearly has the upper hand.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is being developed by Infinity Ward and will be launched on the PC, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 on November 8.
Nintendo Wii and 3DS versions are also planned.