DRM News

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was asked what immediate change he would make to the company. That led to the following exchange :

WSJ: If you could snap your fingers, and instantly make one change in your company, what would it be, and why?

Mr. Kotick: I would have Call of Duty be an online subscription service tomorrow. When you think about what the audience’s interests are and how you could really satisfy bigger audiences with more inspired, creative opportunities, I would love to see us have an online Call of Duty world. I think our players would just have so much of a more compelling experience.

WSJ: Is that coming?

Mr. Kotick: Hopefully.

WSJ: Are the customers ready for it?

Mr. Kotick: I think our audiences are clamoring for it. If you look at what they’re playing on Xbox Live today, we’ve had 1.7 billion hours of multiplayer play on Live. I think we could do a lot more to really satisfy the interests of the customers. I think we could create so many things, and make the game even more fun to play. We haven’t really had a chance to do that yet, so that would be my snap of the fingers.

Left unclear is whether such a setup would mean customers buying the full game and also paying a monthly fee, or if it would be an entirely fee-based system. The latter could actually make more sense than annual incarnations of the franchise being bought for full price, depending on price point. And since this is the company charging $15 for packs of 5 maps (2 of them recycled CoD 4 content), I wouldn’t be too optimistic of a decent rate.

However, I haven’t exactly seen reams of gamers clamouring for such a set up as Kotick claims, and I would have to be convinced of how it would provide a more compelling experience.

(The original WSJ article is behind a paywall and accessible to subscribers only. However, Google is your friend. Thanks also to VG247).