Activision needs to start charging for CoD online, says Pachter


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July 16th, 2010 @ 13:17

By Johnny Cullen

Michael Pachter?s told IG that the industry needs to start thinking of adding subscription models to its multiplayer experiences ? with Activision and Call of Duty leading the charge. No doubt big Bobbo will be pleased to hear that.

Following last night?s NPD results, which showed a 6 percent US sales drop year-over-year, the Wedbush Morgan analyst said it?s time publishers starting looking at plans to monetise online play.

?We think that the overall decline was due to a very large number of people playing multiplayer online games for free on PlayStation Network, and for an annual fee with unlimited game play on Xbox Live,? said Pachter.

?We estimate that a total of 12 million consumers are playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 for an average of 10 hours per week on the two platforms? respective networks, and the continued enjoyment of this game (along with an estimated 6 million Halo online players, 3 million EA Sports players, and 5 million players playing other games, such as Battlefield, Red Dead Redemption, Left 4 Dead and Grand Theft Auto) has sucked the available time away from what otherwise would be spent playing newly purchased games.?

He added: ?We see this as a continuing problem, and think that unless and until the publishers come up with a business model that appropriately captures the value created by the multiplayer experience, we are destined to see a migration of game playing away from packaged goods purchases and toward multiplayer online.

?We think that it is incumbent upon Activision, with the most popular multiplayer game, to take the first step to address monetization of multiplayer. It is too early to tell whether that will be a monthly subscription, tournament entry fees, microtransaction fees, or a combination of all three, but we expect to see the company take some action by year-end, when Call of Duty Black Ops launches.?

Modern Warfare 3 ? ?9.99 a month to play online, ?30 for a yearly sub.

More through the link.

http://www.vg247.com/2010/07/16/activision-needs-to-start-charging-for-call-of-duty-online-says-pachter/

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Sadly they will probably add additional charges to online play. I'd like to see online fees subsidize the cost of the original game so that it opens the market up to casual gamers a little more (i.e. an $80 game becomes a $40 game with about $40 worth of online charges for a typical user, casual gamers might pay less online charges and hardcore gamers might pay more). Right now, the casual gamers are subsidizing the costs of the hardcore gamers who play for 7 hours a day.

However, that's coming from someone that hardly ever plays online games and would much rather play the storyline solo game offline.

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Modern Warfare 3 – £9.99 a month to play online, £30 for a yearly sub.

Two words come to mind, they begin with an F and an O. Bad times ahead I think.

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Who would pay a freakin subscription for cod? As gamers we should boycott this change when it happens and show them we won't bend over for them. They are already charging ridiculous prices for crap dlc and people are eating it up :x

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Gamer's sort of have a decision in how this goes, but both scenarios involve them spending money.

Either you can continue to play the same game online for months/years on end and they'll start charging for them.

or

You can buy and play new games instead of sticking to the older titles.

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Who would pay a freakin subscription for cod? As gamers we should boycott this change when it happens and show them we won't bend over for them. They are already charging ridiculous prices for crap dlc and people are eating it up

Its quite upsetting to think that people buy a game because they enjoy it and secondly because they wish to support a series they've followed religiously since its inception, only to find idiots seeking ways of making even more money. The sad thing is, the core followers of COD will pay to play it online, despite the fact we have already paid for the Game, Console & our Broadband connection, some think we need to pay for the privilege to use the 3 in conjunction. :angry:

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Who would pay a freakin subscription for cod? As gamers we should boycott this change when it happens and show them we won't bend over for them. They are already charging ridiculous prices for crap dlc and people are eating it up :x

Answered your own question there.

"Hey look we've created a sub based CoD. You don't have to pay for the content any more!"

But the sub-

"Free content"

But you're already paying fo-

"Free content!!!111"

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SK[' date=16 July 2010 - 10:12' timestamp='1279289538' post='592913000]

xBox live subs and another fee on top of that? People won't stand for that.

Yeah, I don't even like paying for xbl that much, but its acceptable because its a small fee for one thing yearly that works for every game. Having to pay a fee for multiple games? No way. I will NEVER stand for such gouging, its ridiculous and abusive.

Answered your own question there.

"Hey look we've created a sub based CoD. You don't have to pay for the content any more!"

But the sub-

"Free content"

But you're already paying fo-

"Free content!!!111"

Knowing bobby, they would start out free even with the subscription, and then start charging people on top of the subscription for dlc too. That prick is going to ruin gaming single handedly.

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Just as they are talking about going to a subscription the subscription games are talking about going free to play with microtransactions lol.

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If they sell me the game at a MUCH lower price I would be willing to pay to play online. Similar to cell phone deals, I buy a 1 year MP card then I get the game for practically nothing ($20?). I barely play anything anymore but when I do, its MW2.

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Yeah, no thanks.

I hope the entire gaming scene is heading for a reboot very soon because we're going in the wrong direction.

My thoughts exactly, Sethos. How I long for the days where consoles weren't connected to the internet, games were actually released finished and polished with few glitches, and multiplayer was split screen.

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From the article (emphasis mine):

“We estimate that a total of 12 million consumers are playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 for an average of 10 hours per week on the two platforms’ respective networks, and the continued enjoyment of this game has sucked the available time away from what otherwise would be spent playing newly purchased games.”

He added: “We see this as a continuing problem, and think that unless and until the publishers come up with a business model that appropriately captures the value created by the multiplayer experience, we are destined to see a migration of game playing away from packaged goods purchases and toward multiplayer online.

So let me get this straight. The fact that game developers are creating games that have longevity and sufficient value to justify their $60 price tags (possibly more depending on where you live) is a "continuing problem". On the flip side, if every single multiplayer game got boring after 6-12 hours, this would be a much more preferable scenario from Pachter's perspective. Heaven forbid that people enjoy your games enough to build a long lasting community around them.

Once upon a time the entire idea behind an online multiplayer game was to establish a community and take care of them. That's what separated the best multiplayer games of our time from all the others. However, somewhere along the line we lost our way. Like Sethos said, we're heaving in the wrong direction, and I don't want to see where it ends.

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Personally i couldnt give a toss, split the multiplayer away from single player, charge me less for single player and the people who want to play MP can just buy the MP addon if they want to go down this route. I dont want to have to pay silly amounts of money for a game that comes with MP that i cant play unless i subscribe to.

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Yeah if the recent FF MMO news has told us anything, it's MS aren't willing to open up their platform to MMO's quite so eagerly as they used to be.

So that big cut Activision are talking about missing out on, is about to get much smaller if they shut out the XBL players. Aka the ones who buy their games the most.

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Definitely would not pay for it either. Actually, if they tried crap like that I wouldn't even buy the game.

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Yeah if the recent FF MMO news has told us anything, it's MS aren't willing to open up their platform to MMO's quite so eagerly as they used to be.

It's CoD. Even if a small portion of those billions of people who bought MW2 subbed to this MS would still be seeing a small fortune.

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Doesn't matter if MS aren't willing to open up their platform, which is far more important in their eyes as we've seen time and time again.

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MS's close platform closes a lot of doors for developpers. like for unreal tournament, 360 version got delayed because of it and then they got no mods or custom maps where as PC and PS3 did.

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Doesn't matter if MS aren't willing to open up their platform, which is far more important in their eyes as we've seen time and time again.

You think MS won't open up for CoD?

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My thoughts exactly, Sethos. How I long for the days where consoles weren't connected to the internet, games were actually released finished and polished with few glitches, and multiplayer was split screen.

I miss those days :(

Activision can GTFO with this. But unfortunately you'll have those people who will buy anything COD related just because it's COD. Even if it's some kind of COD: Turd Simulator.

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Wasnt Activision last week arguing that they should be getting some of xbl subs as they're bringing most of the gamers to the service? and about 60% of the users on xbl are playing Activision Games? I guess this is there responce as Microsoft said no :p

Just as they are talking about going to a subscription the subscription games are talking about going free to play with microtransactions lol.

If you're on about WoW, nowhere in the interview did they even say they was thinking about it or that they had even talked about it. The question which was asked was a 'loaded' question to get a good responce they can use.. "do you think WoW would ever become free to play" and the answer Blizzard gave was "we havent talked it, we havent thought about it, but maybe in the future we could switch to free to play but supported by micro transactions.. but we currently have no plans for the future to do this'. So blizzard just said, its something we could do in the future but we havent even discussed it.

WoW wont switch to free to play while it remains popular, it makes no sense to switch from a ?9-11 subscription based model which has 11million+ people paying, to free to play with micro transactions.

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