Activision Hints At Subscription-Based 'Call of Duty'

Quote :: A subscription-based 'Call of Duty' title is looking more and more likely.

When asked about the company's upcoming plans for the series during its financial call this afternoon, President and CEO of Activision Publishing Mike Griffith re-confirmed the series will see a new title every year, and said new business models are being looked at.

DAILY FIX VIDEO FEBRUARY 11, 2010

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"Our strategy continues to be to annualize our key franchises. We've indicated before that Call of Duty is on a two year development cycle given the content and work that needs to go into a high-quality game experience," said Griffith.

"We also have new business models potentially for the franchise in the future and we've been building capabilities on both the business development side as well as the studio side of it. We remain committed to annualize the Call of Duty franchise."

President and CEO of Activision Bobby Kotick also hinted at where the company wants to take Call of Duty going forward.

"If you think about the success that we've had in other product categories on subscription, you can get a sense of the direction that we want to take that franchise," he said.

Last November, Activision Blizzard CFO Thomas Tippl stated during the BMO Capital Markets Conference in New York City the company plans to test and launch new online business models for its top franchises.

Quote :: There’s been a fair bit of discussion lately regarding the pros and cons of charging people to play the online content of a game. The main focus of these discussions always seems to fall on Activision, Bobby Kotick and the Call of Duty franchise – mainly due to various comments Kotick has made in the past.

Well, an interesting thread has started up over at 360 Junkies where a poster has claimed the following;

“I was trying to join a friend’s session on MW2 the other day and had this screen pop up. It clearly says at the top of this menu: “Modern Warfare 2 Membersh”, in which we can confidently assume that the last word is “Memberships”. If you’ll notice at the bottom is an option to “Add Microsoft Points”, clearly indicating that this was intended to be a menu for purchasing different levels of Membership, presumably memberships would have been offered in a variety of durations.”

By the sounds of it the guy has been met with a mixed reception so he has uploaded the following video to back up his claim;