Activision’s semi-controversial subscription-based Call of Duty portal service, Call of Duty: Elite, has 10 million registered users. Two million of them are paying subscribers. Reports show that from the service’s launch til the 31st March, the Call of Duty franchise has enjoyed 40 million monthly active users who have played a total of 1.6 billion hours of online gameplay in Modern Warfare 3 alone.
This has been a part of Activision’s $1.17B in revenue in the past three months. However, even though the revenue is down from the $1.45B from 2011, CEO Bobby Kotick is excited for the coming year.
”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,” Kotick pointed out.
He went on to note, ”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.”
Call of Duty: Elite’s subscription service has been more of a Season Pass for Call of Duty DLC, more than anything else, while free Elite users have enjoyed the services’ stat tracking and map analysis.