During the 2012 D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg was frank about the rocky start of the Call of Duty Elite service. He admitted that even when the service was announced, there were some doubts internally about how to manage such an ambitious project.
"I hesitate to talk about Elite, because even though we've had some early success with the numbers, it's far from time for us to be doing any victory laps on Elite," said Hirshberg, according to GI.biz. "We had some technological stumbles at launch and that frustrated some of our fans. We're still making that right. But if we only talk about the things that go as planned then we miss some of the most valuable dialogue that can come out of this.”
The idea behind Call of Duty Elite seemed simple enough. "There's this massive community of people, all passionate about the same thing, with remarkably few ways to communicate and interact with one another,” described Hirshberg. “Overlay that with social network and connecting over digital spaces with the things we're passionate about is the zeitgeist trend in our culture. We wanted to create a way of unlocking Call of Duty's community as a real network."
There was a major communication issue over what should be free and whether they should do a beta. "There was only one problem, we wanted to do a beta. None of the features were going to demonstrable in the beta because they were all tied into the code of Modern Warfare 3 and the beta was going to be Black Ops multiplayer,” said Hirshberg. "With the launching of Elite we had a marketing Sophie's Choice. Do we do the beta, which is the right thing to do from a development standpoint, or do we make the best possible first impression, which was probably the right thing to do from the marketing standpoint."
"We chose to tell people right out of the gate that while the vast majority of features would be free, there would be a premium membership,” he added. “A lot people thought we should have waited and show people what they get for the premium membership before talking about its existence. But we knew this question about whether it would be free would immediately be asked. We'd be put on the spot. We chose to be transparent and tell people our intentions from the beginning. The words 'Call of Duty' plus the word 'subscription' equals 'unleash blogger hell'.”
Hirshberg planned to unveil the pricing strategies of Elite at community event Call of Duty XP, but he was wary of more backlash; he knew "if we could get the world's attention we would have one shot to show of the full features set of Call of Duty Elite and everything you get as part of membership."
Call of Duty Elite can claim over 7 million subscribers, with 1.5 million paying subscribers. "Both Elite and XP were both experiments in how willing people are to enter a relationship, to treat it more like a brand or a lifestyle. Like I said, we're a long way from doing victory laps but we're in it for the long haul. We made it for the right reasons and believe its' right for a players and if we get it right we can change the relationship, make the game better and more fun for players."
