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With Call of Duty: Elite, gamers can see all kinds of information about their own play, and that of their fellow Call of Duty devotees.(Credit: Activision)
SAN FRANCISCO--Call of Duty, meet the social network.
Today, Activision pulled back the wraps on Call of Duty: Elite, a dedicated social experience for players of the long-running and extremely popular video game franchise.
At launch, the service will be in beta and available to players of the billion-dollar hit Call of Duty: Black Ops, and this fall, it will extend to the next iteration of the game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
Elite is a fairly sophisticated effort aimed at keeping the substantial Call of Duty community--Activision said 20 million people play the game each month--engaged, and creating a new sense of connection amongst those millions. The system will allow players to form groups with just about anyone or clans with their friends, play in leagues, share videos of their best action to Facebook and YouTube, see detailed statistics on game play for themselves or their friends, win prizes, and much more.
Activision wants players to think of Elite as something that creates "four pillars" around the game: Career, Connect, Compete, and Improve.
The idea here is that in the Career section, players will be able to see stats about their Call of Duty game play that is much like what you'd see on the back of a baseball card. Examples include winning percentage, kill/death ratios, the results of recent matches, and even a level calculator that estimates how many hours someone will have to play to reach a milestone. Other statistics include number of kills, headshots, assists, and more.
And by being able to see others' stats, players will be given data that can answer one of the most important questions of all in a community like that of Call of Duty: Who's better at the game.
With Connect, Elite allows the creation of groups, of which any user can be a member of up to 64 at a time. They can be based around geography, topics, events, or just about anything that might bring people--even those who don't know each other--together.
In the Compete category, players will see event calendars showing what is going on in the Call of Duty universe. Events can be just about anything from matches to competitions to upload the best video of a tomahawk kill, an Activision representative said at an invite-only presentation on the Elite service earlier this month. This would also be the section where players would join leagues.
Activision has not said yet how much it will charge for access to Elite, but it did say that those who subscribe to the service will get all-you-can-eat access as well as any and all downloadable Call of Duty content. The company also said that Elite will cost less than any comparable service, presumably meaning Microsoft's Xbox Live, or Sony's PlayStation Network. Xbox Live Gold costs $60 a year.
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