Paid-for "second tier" COD online soon?

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 4 January, 2011

Analyst expects it in the next few months.

Analyst Wedbush Securities reckons Activision will launch a "second tier" of online Call of Duty multiplayer in the next few months – and charge gamers for it.

"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 reported (via Kotaku). "We expect this to occur during the first quarter of 2011."

Such a venture is of course unannounced at this stage, and Activision and Call of Duty developers Infinity Ward and Treyarch have in the past promised gamers they will never have to pay to play the world's most popular FPS online.

But this is the first time an analyst has directly claimed a monetised COD multiplayer feature is in the works - and suggested a launch time frame.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has expressed a desire to make more money from the online portion of his crown jewel. Last year he said that if he could do one thing, he would make Call of Duty "an online subscription service" as soon as tomorrow.

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About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (34) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • tossetaz #1 1 year ago

    what is "second tier"? is it some kind of premium service along the lines of what blizzard have been talking about with battle.net? so regular play will continue to be free?

  • linea #2 1 year ago

    "Activision remains a top pick"

    This is a typo, right?

  • weejok #3 1 year ago

    Well if people are stupid enough to pay extra.....

  • TeaFiend #4 1 year ago

    Surely they would only announce this once a new game is about to come out, rather than now for a future product?

  • Genius #5 1 year ago

    "Last year he said that if he could do one thing, he would make Call of Duty "an online subscription service" as soon as tomorrow."

    You heard it here first. Call Of Duty online subscription service possibly starting January 5th.

  • carlitoswagon #6 1 year ago

    Just release some new maps for cod4. The rest can go fuck.

  • bad09 #7 1 year ago

    "Multplayer free with every copy of Black Ops". That's what the game says. Sure it's just a dig a rival EA but it says it all.

    Every year since MW we get this "prediction". Every year it turns out bollocks, they is just no way to make people buy into subscription on an FPS and Acti are not about to hand someone else a great chunk of the COD fanbase.

  • beastmaster #8 1 year ago

    I suppose after the "it's a gift" Tony Hawks games & the fall of the rhythm action genre, Activision need to make their money somehow.

  • Vanmunt #9 1 year ago

    WHAT.. I am not paying to play DC Online, who pays to play game... ehat .. oh wait. wrong thread.

  • TheBoyChris #10 1 year ago

    Good old Pachter.

  • Dizzy #11 1 year ago

    "Activision remains a top prick"

    Fixed.

  • TVoJ #12 1 year ago

    Linea beat you to it sorry Dizzy, only by like 30 mins. :p

  • menage #13 1 year ago

    And the flock will move elsewhere.

  • Olemak #14 1 year ago

    CoD has already peaked, and with Infinity Ward in ruins, the franchise is headed for a long decline. From a business point of view, Kotick is absolutely right to "montetize" CoD however in every way possible, because the oportunity will be lost soon enough.

    We'll see CoD make more money for Acti, but less fans, who will increasingly swarm over to the competition. In the end, the only people buying and playing CoD will be the people who fall for the marketing blitz, and slowly the franchice will stagnate and die, as much as franchices ever die: there will be no more sequels for a good while, and the CoD brand will fade from the mainstream.

    But then - 10, maybe 15 years later - old fanboys will start to forget the embarrasing death-rattle of CoD, but they will start remembering the awseome set-pieces of the first MW or how they once totally pwned in that level they cant remember the name of, was it MW2 or was it MW3 or was it CoD4?: I cant remember but that game was "frigging" awesome.

    And then the boss of shooter relations at acti will decide to reboot the franchise. He'll commision a sequel from a promising game studio, and they'll make fhe first WWII shooter the world has seen in 20 years, or maybe it's a napoleonic war shooter, or a cyberpunk action game, or just another modern warfare game (we're talking 2030 by this stage, remember), and so the great circle of life begins again.

    I'll be generous and predict five more annual sequels to CoD until the party is over for this time, or maybe just two mor CoD's if one of them is a pay to play online thingie. Either way acti will make tons of money off it, and either way, the CoD brand is dying.

  • HisDudness #15 1 year ago

    hehe Napoleonic War shooter... Maybe you can use motion controls to reload your musket or affix bayonet.

  • Tmecha #16 1 year ago

    The scary part is people will pay for it.

  • AllenSpawn #17 1 year ago

    @tossetaz

    "what is second tier?"

    Well MoH had tier one..... So boobie kuntick wants to go one higher!

  • Claudiov1.0 #18 1 year ago

    OH so Activision is finally going to provide a godd service, oh and even better you will have to pay for a service that any 1st party game offers, WTF!?!?!

  • FuzzyDuck #19 1 year ago

    With the state of the world economy, you'd have thought that analysts would have been the first to go. C**ts.

    If this does happen it'll spare us from the yearly updates though, right? CoD has hit the point i dread seeing it show its face at the same time of year as the blinking X Factor.

    +2 for mediocrity and banality then.

  • beastmaster #20 1 year ago

    In terms of gameplay, the series is certainly stagnant now. The sales figures though are quite staggering.

    As for it dying off, I'm sure plenty of people would like it to happen. It won't though. It's kind of become like FIFA and NFS. I expect the franchise to run indefinitely. Much like these games, some years will be better than others.

    Yes, there are better FPS franchises out there. However, quality doesn't necessarily mean sales.

    What would this new tier introduce? I suspect it would have to be new weapons, camo, perhaps a few new perks. Perhaps a couple of exclusive maps? I also don't see with the MS policy of how it would work on the 360.
    Edited by beastmaster at 04/01/11 @ 10:26

  • Mkwone #21 1 year ago

    People have been predicting this for the best part of a year already.

    I predict if it happens people will complain and then pay for a 6 month subscription.

  • CaptainQuint #22 1 year ago

    It won't affect me because I don't play this shite.

    Halo forever, ladies.

  • telboy007 #23 1 year ago

    I really need to buy a puma slipper woman, they are my favourite kind. Any ideas?

  • AphoticCosmos #24 1 year ago

    Man, I wish I could be an "industry analyst". I could sit in the pub all day thinking up bullshit or stuff that people have known for ages, and then earn hundreds of thousands of pounds for writing it down!

  • StevilKnevil #25 1 year ago

    Mr Koticks eyes probably lit up(with little dollar signs) the day he heard of "project 10 dorrar".

    This will probably be something like that bundled with a couple of extra in game bits and bobs to identify you as one of the Activision Super Special Heavy Attack Total Soldiers. You work it out.

    As long as they dont push the price too high, I reckon plenty will go for it.

  • Olemak #26 1 year ago

    How does this sound: online play of CoD requires a subscription costing about 3 euros/dollars per month.

    New copies comes with a cupon code, redeemable for 3 months of free online.

    Subscription also gives a discount of 25% on DLC.

    This would cut down on second hand trades, not really hurt casual gamers (who don't play the same games for several months anyway), tie customers closer to Acti because of the semi-mandatory registration, increase revenue and make investors very happy. It will also encourage "game support" by developers/publsihers, in the form of new content for establsihed titles.

    Of course, the same subscription would apply to all CoD titles, perhaps even all Acti titles with online play. So it would be a subscription to acti titles, not to CoD as such. This could, potentially, allow Activision to use spearhed titles like CoD a "leverage" for other games, like Guitar Hero et cetera. Every new Acti game contains a new redeemable coupon worth 3 months of "free online" which cvan be applied to an excisting subscription/account.

    If you already have a subscription going, you'd probably prefer franchises which will run on the same subscription, right?

    I'd be a little surprised if they don't try to launch something like this pretty soon, even if they will aliienate some enthusiasts. Microsoft is getting away with it, why shouldn't Activision?

  • chrisola #27 1 year ago

    I got £30 cash from CEX for Black Ops last week.

    The Black Ops mp just never grabbed me -- 3 to 4 headshots with the m14 to kill someone? Having to unlock weapons by level AND then by saving up the points aswell?

    Didn't bother with the SP after the russion prison level.

  • lp24h #28 1 year ago

    everyone on xbox is already paying to play it online but not into acti's hands only MS. its all going to go this way soon, paying to play all games online. however they are gonna have to reduce the price of games (tho they wont) if they want the masses to pay for the online aspect. to charge for COD online then reduce the price of the game by more than 50%. and then keep going.

  • RevDiesel #29 1 year ago

    To paraphrase Snoop: "When the pimp's in the COD ma; Drop it like it's hot"

  • joelstinton #30 1 year ago

    To be honest from a buisness standpoint if they offered every map made so far from a central hub, for a couple pounds a month , (considering easily over a million players were playing black ops on launch, (thats two million pound a month, 24 million a year) then i can see why it could be done. But they will have to offer a lot, and some more to entice players.

    I moved to Battlefield a couple weeks back and i love it, i wouldn't be surprised if this new COD subscription service would offer a new mode called 'blitz' or 'charge' and its basically every cod level with 4 set of Nuclear weapons that the opposing team has to disarm...... i wouldn't be sutprsied at all.

  • cherryuk #31 1 year ago

    GET LOST YOU GREEDY ACTIVISION SCUM!

  • DrDean #32 1 year ago

    Why does this drivel from these non-game industry employed game-industry experts keep getting reported without any analysis or some sort of opinion?

    As pointed out above we have already had the predictions of a Wii-HD coming out in 2009, 2010, erm sorry no the PS3 dominating the US and European markets as it does in Japan, erm sorry and now again the further monetisation of CoD when in fact no explanation has ever been given as to why Microsoft (in particular) would allow any reduction in the popularity of a game which at its peak, accounts for a significant percentage of the amount of online play upon their existing paid for service, that is that people are actually paying Mic to play. Or to put it another way, Sony is going to pay for the infrastructure and provide this for free, so that Acti can charge players to play CoD.

    I just received another hot investing tip from Wendbush, companies like to make money as this is generally considered a prerequisite of being in the business of being in business, also in general water tends to be quite wet and sometimes all you need to get your company name all over the internet, and so look like a trusted industry insider, is to snip off a re-heated press release including the terms 'CoD' 'extra costs' 'Kotick says'.

  • zubnut #33 1 year ago

    Apart from Wetbush regurgitating what some other Anal-ist predicted well over a year ago, it just makes no sense to do that.
    You'll just fragment the market for their game and they'll lose players to rival companies who aren't quite as greedy yet.
    My prediction is for acti to continue with the overpriced map packs and other dlc as MS will never allow it anyway. They'll just tell kotick to feck off and make his own console if he wants that sort of control.

  • TheTrueSpin #34 1 year ago

    CoD is no longer in its prime. This might have worked back when MW2 was released, but most are already getting tired of CoD and will simply move on if forced to pay.