Earlier this week, Activision, publisher of the Call of Duty videogame series, announced a new service titled Call of Duty Elite, which is set to launch sometime this summer. Activision claims that Elite will allow for Call of Duty players to track their lifetime statistics via a new website. It will provide personal, in depth information about every match the player has participated in, including the weapons they used, their kill/death ratio, where they were killed on each particular map, and much more. Another primary feature of Elite will be a social networking service similar to Facebook. Call of Duty players will now be able to amalgamate their Xbox Live, Playstation Network, and Facebook friends (who also play CoD) in one place, where they can set up private matches, meet new CoD players, and share in-game videos and pictures with others. Exclusive tournaments and prizes will also be offered through Elite.
While that all sounds great, it may not come without (another) price tag. Activision says that there will be a basic service that will be free to all players, but many features, such as the tournaments and some social networking features, will be part of a premium service that will be made available through a monthly fee. A May 31 USA TODAY article estimates that the price range will be somewhere between $5-10 per month. Really, Activision? The Call of Duty franchise is your most successful game series. Actually, it is one of the most successful videogame franchises of all time, earning $4 billion over the last 8 years. Those profits are based solely on game sales. They do not include the sales of the overpriced multiplayer map packs, which usually cost $15 each. So if you were to buy the two map packs for Call of Duty: Black Ops (like I did, due to my naive fandom) you have spent half the price of the game itself, for only 8 mulitplayer maps. Now they want to charge $5-10 per month so I can do most of the things I could've done with a free Facebook account? This is corporate greed at its finest. Yes, these add-ons are optional, and nobody is being forced to purchase them, but when people have already paid an exorbitant amount of money for the game itself, is it too much to ask for some quality, free of charge accessories and support to go along with the game? This concept applies even more so to the Call of Duty series, which has a loyal fanbase that has turned the once modest gaming franchise into a lucrative cash cow.
This rabid and relentless profiteering is not isolated to Call of Duty either. It is a growing problem in the gaming industry as a whole. The Madden NFL series, developed and published by EA Sports, is a prime example. Over the past 5 years, Madden has turned greed into an art form. In late 2004, EA Sports came to an agreement with the NFL and the NFLPA that allowed for them to be the exclusive producer of NFL videogames. This meant that other NFL games, such as the 2K and Gameday series, were dead in the water. Many people believed this was done to destroy the competition coming from the 2K series, which recently started selling its games at $20, compared to Madden's $50 at the time. Soon after EA Sports secured exclusivity, numerous fans noted a drop off in the game's appeal and features. EA also began engaging in some serious penny pushing, such as selling alternate team jerseys as downloadable content (this stopped after the majority of fans railed against it) and forcing many people who buy a used copy of Madden buy what they call an "online pass". If you don't buy the online pass, you won't have access to any of the game's online features.
While that all sounds great, it may not come without (another) price tag. Activision says that there will be a basic service that will be free to all players, but many features, such as the tournaments and some social networking features, will be part of a premium service that will be made available through a monthly fee. A May 31 USA TODAY article estimates that the price range will be somewhere between $5-10 per month. Really, Activision? The Call of Duty franchise is your most successful game series. Actually, it is one of the most successful videogame franchises of all time, earning $4 billion over the last 8 years. Those profits are based solely on game sales. They do not include the sales of the overpriced multiplayer map packs, which usually cost $15 each. So if you were to buy the two map packs for Call of Duty: Black Ops (like I did, due to my naive fandom) you have spent half the price of the game itself, for only 8 mulitplayer maps. Now they want to charge $5-10 per month so I can do most of the things I could've done with a free Facebook account? This is corporate greed at its finest. Yes, these add-ons are optional, and nobody is being forced to purchase them, but when people have already paid an exorbitant amount of money for the game itself, is it too much to ask for some quality, free of charge accessories and support to go along with the game? This concept applies even more so to the Call of Duty series, which has a loyal fanbase that has turned the once modest gaming franchise into a lucrative cash cow.
This rabid and relentless profiteering is not isolated to Call of Duty either. It is a growing problem in the gaming industry as a whole. The Madden NFL series, developed and published by EA Sports, is a prime example. Over the past 5 years, Madden has turned greed into an art form. In late 2004, EA Sports came to an agreement with the NFL and the NFLPA that allowed for them to be the exclusive producer of NFL videogames. This meant that other NFL games, such as the 2K and Gameday series, were dead in the water. Many people believed this was done to destroy the competition coming from the 2K series, which recently started selling its games at $20, compared to Madden's $50 at the time. Soon after EA Sports secured exclusivity, numerous fans noted a drop off in the game's appeal and features. EA also began engaging in some serious penny pushing, such as selling alternate team jerseys as downloadable content (this stopped after the majority of fans railed against it) and forcing many people who buy a used copy of Madden buy what they call an "online pass". If you don't buy the online pass, you won't have access to any of the game's online features.
The only way this type of greed can be neutralized is through direct competition with the offending company. EA has covered their bases on that one by becoming an exclusive provider of NFL licensed games, but the same can not be said for Activision. Although Call of Duty is arguably the most popular game franchise currently on the market, is does have some up and coming competition, particularly from the Battlefield series. When Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is released in November, it will be in direct competition with Battlefield 3, another military shooter that is, quite ironically, being developed and published by EA. Unlike the Call of Duty series, the Battlefield series has, in the past, offered downloadable content for free. They used their free DLC against Modern Warfare in advertising, and that probably resonated with gamers. Now, Battlefield is doing the same thing to attack CoD Elite. Today, EA announced Battlelog, an online service for Battlefield games that will include many of the features of Elite, but, as they said on the game's official blog, it will be offered "for the monthly fee of (drum roll)... zero dollars". By offering DLC and services for free, Battlefield 3 will probably boost its sales. Recent polling has also shown that interest in Battlefield 3 is quickly growing, which is bad news for Modern Warfare 3. Greed in the videogame industry is a major problem, no doubt. But in the end it is up to us to fight against it. By closing our wallets, we can and should send a powerful message to these companies that insist on taking advantage of us.
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