Why Call of Duty will stay free to play?

A lot of rumors have been going around that the Call of Duty franchise will be moving from free to play online to a monthly subscription service. Activision has already denied this stating that their is not enough content to charge a monthly fee to consumers. One of the famous rumored reasons other than money issues for West and Zampela leaving Activision was over the fact that Activision wanted to charge a monthly fee for online play. West and Zampela believed that the franchise should always be free to play online and told Activision the backlash would hurt the company.

Even Michael Pachter analyst has made predictions that Activision would move Call of Duty to a monthly pay service in order to keep profits high since consumers are buying less video games. Michael Pachter argues people have less money in general so gamers are playing the same games more often and buying less software all together. I am disagreeing with Michael Pachter and siding with Activision on this one. Moving Call of Duty from a free to play to monthly service would be a risky move which Activision is not willing to take.

Why is making a monthly service risky? Well this would require Activision to come out with true content for the game. If you look at the map packs for the Call of Duty franchise they offer very little content compared to the game as a whole. In Modern Warfare 2 you get five maps (two of which came from Modern Warfare) for the price of $15. Really you are only paying for the development of three new maps compared to the price of the original game of $60. Modern Warfare 2 came with sixteen multiplayer maps and added ten more with both add ons. That means consumers payed $30 dollars for ten new maps (well six if you don’t count the old maps). That is a steep price since the add ons do not add any new weapons, or modes.

If Call of Duty did go to monthly service it would have to add true content which might not be a bad thing. For starters it would mean that the bugs and glitches would have to be fixed in a more timely manner compared to the current rate that they are now (sorry to all the Black Ops fans who play on Playstation 3). New content such as speech lobbies, or even towns would have to be added in order to make the game feel more like a service than just the same game. New Maps and maybe even new weapons would have to be added in order to keep players interested enough to keep players paying the cost to keep up the service. Activision would also have to hire a bigger staff in order update the game faster and to keep up with customer complaints. It would actually be a great thing for Activision to have a customer complaint hotline since I have been wanting to get some things off my chest, but that will never happen since Activision does not need one (or so they think).

People underestimate the power of consumer as well. Gamers will riot in the streets (if not I will have lost all hope) if Activision moves Call of Duty to a monthly service. We might not pick a lot of fights with developers but when it comes to our wallets we don’t like getting ripped off. Activision would have to really show that a monthly service would add more content than we are already getting from the free to play service (which I highly doubt). Activision is about taking minor steps in most of their franchises and unless another first person shooter went to a pay to play service the risk would be to high for Activision.

Right now add ons work for Activsion because it does not take a lot of resources to develop new maps. People are more likely as well to pay the one time fee of $15 dollars then to pay a constant fee of ten dollars a month. The current Call of Duty will probably see its share of add ons and probably at the same price as the last ones. I am predicting more add ons as well at least three since the last two add ons sold in the millions. Let us just hope that the new add ons add something more like new achievements, weapons, or even gameplay modes then just maps.