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One Million Paying for Call of Duty Elite - Four Million Signed up for Free Version
Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 11:30 AM ETTags: Call of Duty Elite, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Activision (all tags)
That's a full million customers paying an extra $49 on top of the purchase of the game. Activision has to be psyched.
When the folks at Activision said that they weren't ready for the popularity of Call of Duty Elite, it seemed a little ridiculous. After all, the 'Modern Warfare' series is one of the biggest around, so high signup numbers should have been expected. Activision definitely couldn't have anticipated this much desire.
The free Call of Duty Elite service had four million signups in the first month. That's a good chunk of the people that own the game - half or more - but it's not shocking that people would sign up for something free. The Elite Premium service had a million gamers sign up for it. That's a million gamers at $49 a pop, paying for everything offered in the Premium program. That's on top of the $59 the game cost.
Game makers have long been looking for the thing that will help combat used game sales and it's clear that Activision is on to something here. Even if a player buys 'Modern Warfare 3' used from GameStop, they'll be paying their $49 straight to Activision if they want the Elite experience.
Based on the success of Call of Duty Elite Premium, you can expect to see this sort of thing showing up in other games as well.
Source: Kotaku
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One Million Paying for Call of Duty Elite - Four Million Signed up for Free Version
Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 11:30 AM ETTags: Call of Duty Elite, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Activision (all tags)
That's a full million customers paying an extra $49 on top of the purchase of the game. Activision has to be psyched.
When the folks at Activision said that they weren't ready for the popularity of Call of Duty Elite, it seemed a little ridiculous. After all, the 'Modern Warfare' series is one of the biggest around, so high signup numbers should have been expected. Activision definitely couldn't have anticipated this much desire.
The free Call of Duty Elite service had four million signups in the first month. That's a good chunk of the people that own the game - half or more - but it's not shocking that people would sign up for something free. The Elite Premium service had a million gamers sign up for it. That's a million gamers at $49 a pop, paying for everything offered in the Premium program. That's on top of the $59 the game cost.
Game makers have long been looking for the thing that will help combat used game sales and it's clear that Activision is on to something here. Even if a player buys 'Modern Warfare 3' used from GameStop, they'll be paying their $49 straight to Activision if they want the Elite experience.
Based on the success of Call of Duty Elite Premium, you can expect to see this sort of thing showing up in other games as well.
Source: Kotaku
See what people are saying about this story in our forums area, or check out other recent discussions.
1,600 Cheaters Banned from 'Modern Warfare 3'
Mon Nov 21, 2011 at 09:30 AM ETTags: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty, Activision (all tags)
Nice to see cheaters and hackers actually being taken care of, isn't it?
Every multiplayer game that's released gets modded, hacked, exploited and otherwise abused. It's just a fact of life. Of course, some companies are better than others at taking care of those cheaters, and Activision is fantastic.
The game has been out less than two weeks and already 1,600 cheaters have been banned. Rob Bowling, creative strategist for Infinity Ward, says that updates are in the works to prevent these same exploits from being taken advantage of in the future.
Bowling adds in his Twitter update that reports from the community are helping identify the cheaters, so keep it up!
Source: Kotaku
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1,600 Cheaters Banned from 'Modern Warfare 3'
Mon Nov 21, 2011 at 09:30 AM ETTags: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty, Activision (all tags)
Nice to see cheaters and hackers actually being taken care of, isn't it?
Every multiplayer game that's released gets modded, hacked, exploited and otherwise abused. It's just a fact of life. Of course, some companies are better than others at taking care of those cheaters, and Activision is fantastic.
The game has been out less than two weeks and already 1,600 cheaters have been banned. Rob Bowling, creative strategist for Infinity Ward, says that updates are in the works to prevent these same exploits from being taken advantage of in the future.
Bowling adds in his Twitter update that reports from the community are helping identify the cheaters, so keep it up!
Source: Kotaku
See what people are saying about this story in our forums area, or check out other recent discussions.
Vivendi Sells Off $427 Million of Activision Blizzard Stock
Thu Nov 17, 2011 at 11:30 AM ETTags: Blizzard, Activision, Vivendi, Activision Blizzard (all tags)
They're still majority shareholders in the game company, but analysts are questioning the move.
Vivendi, the French media conglomerate that owns StudioCanal, Interscope Records and a glut of other music, television and movie businesses has sold off a significant chunk of their share in Activision Blizzard. They've dropped from holding 63 percent of the stock to 60.
That may not sounds like a big difference, but that three percent equates to more than $400 million. Vivendi says it's nothing major though. " This is a tactical disposal with regards to our overall capital structure, and we remain committed to Activision and to being the main shareholder."
Talk around the financial circles is that the sale of the stock was to help pay for a $1.9 billion deal to buy EMI. Analysts don't get why though. As Claudio Aspesi of Bernstein Research puts it, "The wisdom of selling about three percent in a business that is one of the key bastions of growth for the group to aid a transformational acquisition in a challenged business, such as recorded music, seems questionable."
Source: Joystiq
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Vivendi Sells Off $427 Million of Activision Blizzard Stock
Thu Nov 17, 2011 at 11:30 AM ETTags: Blizzard, Activision, Vivendi, Activision Blizzard (all tags)
They're still majority shareholders in the game company, but analysts are questioning the move.
Vivendi, the French media conglomerate that owns StudioCanal, Interscope Records and a glut of other music, television and movie businesses has sold off a significant chunk of their share in Activision Blizzard. They've dropped from holding 63 percent of the stock to 60.
That may not sounds like a big difference, but that three percent equates to more than $400 million. Vivendi says it's nothing major though. " This is a tactical disposal with regards to our overall capital structure, and we remain committed to Activision and to being the main shareholder."
Talk around the financial circles is that the sale of the stock was to help pay for a $1.9 billion deal to buy EMI. Analysts don't get why though. As Claudio Aspesi of Bernstein Research puts it, "The wisdom of selling about three percent in a business that is one of the key bastions of growth for the group to aid a transformational acquisition in a challenged business, such as recorded music, seems questionable."
Source: Joystiq
See what people are saying about this story in our forums area, or check out other recent discussions.
Call of Duty Elite Subscribers Get a Free Month Due to Outage
Thu Nov 10, 2011 at 10:30 AM ETTags: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty Elite, Call of Duty, Activision (all tags)
They've also extended Founder status to anyone who registers before the end of November.
The Call of Duty Elite service is a really interesting experiment in premium content in videogames. It gives you access to free DLC, regular competition for real life prizes, benefits for clans and plenty more for $49.
This would all be very cool except for the fact that it's been down since the game launched. Activision says that the outage is due to a much bigger response than they expected which completely crushed their system.
"We're immediately deploying multiple additional servers to beef up the system," says Activision. "We are also going to temporarily limit access to Elite services on both the console applications and website while we build additional capacity and scale."
Source: Kotaku
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