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Call of Duty Elite has 10 million users, 2 million pay

Activision updates stats, announces revenue drop.

The Call of Duty Elite service now has 10 million registered users, two million of which are paid-up premium subscribers, publisher Activision has announced.

As of 31st March, its FPS franchise has 40 million monthly active users, with players logging a total of 1.6 billion hours of online gameplay in Modern Warfare 3.

The numbers were released as part of the publisher's quarterly financial report. Net revenue for the last three months was $1.17 billion, down from $1.45 billion during the first quarter of 2011.

However, CEO Bobby Kotick stressed its performance was "better than expected" and it has strong prospects going forward.

"On May 15 Blizzard Entertainment will release the highly anticipated Diablo 3 and we are proud to report that pre-orders for the game worldwide have set a new record for Blizzard," he said.

"For the remainder of 2012 and beyond, our product pipeline includes some of the most innovative games we have ever developed for our established franchises, including Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm and all new MMORPG game, as well as Activision Publishing's Skylander's Giants, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and a new universe from Bungie.

"Our high-quality brands, industry leading operational capabilities and solid balance sheet should enable us to continue to take full advantage of the opportunities afforded by the expanding interactive entertainment market and deliver continued superior returns to our shareholders."

Kotick also pulled out Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure for special mention. Its new kids franchise has now sold more than 30 million toy add-ons since launch and was the best-selling children's game for the first quarter of 2012.