Maximum PC

Last year Michael Pachter, an industry analyst, had an interview in Official Xbox Magazine where he went on to say Activision and the other big game companies are going to try to milk money from online titles like Call of Duty. He basically said that there is all this extra game time being played for free and the big boys such as Activision and Electronic Arts want in. Well I'm sure they do, really sure they do, but what they don't seem to understand is that we ARE paying for that play time. Who the heck bought Call of Duty for the single player game? So assuming we payed $60 for the game, that is equal to a four month subscription at $15/month to play Call of Duty: Black Ops. Which is about how long the average player probably played it before moving on to the next big thing, and those that didn't move on most surely invested in the map packs so that's more money there as well.

People will definitely pay a subscription for an addictive, well polished, fun and extremely quality game such as World of WarCraft as they have for MMO RPGs for years but that is a very specific type of gamer, plus the fact that that is a game with a strong social element with thousands of players on your server and loads of free content released on a regular basis to keep you interested. I mean, for a long while I just used WoW as a $15/month chat room that took up 15GBs on my system, lol. And they're at what, 11 million subscribers? Now that's nice getting 11 million people to pay $15/month but Call of Duty wouldn't garner that many paying subscribers, I'm pretty sure of that. Although They did sell, what, close to 20 million units of Modern Warfare 2 at $60 a pop? That's a lot of dough in my book so what are they complaining about. Could corporate greed be ANY more apparent?

Michael Pachter went on to say he bets at least 3 million people would pay monthly to play Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, but How many game sales would Activision lose from the people that want no part in that payment plan? He also made a statement that went something like "I don't know why all these people expect everything to be free" (on the internet). But See my first paragraph for my viewpoint on that. The game wasn't free in the first place. And guess what? I, for one, do expect some free goodies on the internet like PC flash/indie games, web sites, and applications. Why not? I do free stuff for people all the time and have been known to give away items to friends, family, and neighbors, etc. Don't we all? Their thought process is that we the public have been getting away with free downloads for far too long and that we have grown entirely too accustomed to it and it should be stopped. But that's basically a different subject, and I digress.

What do you think about the situation with games that typically have "free" multiplayer components charging monthly subscriptions?

I can't speak for anyone else but I just simply would not purchase the game if there was a monthly subscription. Case closed. Hell, I won't even purchase games like COD because they just aren't very good and have zero improvements since the one released 2-3 titles ago. Maybe if they ever release a new console, we'll get some updated COD games.

I second this, but to an extent. There simply aren't any games worth paying a subscription to play. I rarely ever even purchase any live subscription cards to play games online on my 360 because there just aren't hardly any games worth doing so for. Quality begets quantity, plain and simple. If somehow COD:MW3 were to be an MMO-style FPS and still looked as epic as it does in the trailer, plus had killer overall quality, then hell yeah I'd pay to play if necessary, but I'm not holding my breath for that.

The one and only game that I paid a subscription too was EVE Online. I enjoyed it, but I don't pay for it anymore. I don't think I would ever pay monthly for a FPS game.

If people enjoy the game that they pay monthly for, then that's all good to me. They're enjoying what they paid for, so whatever.

MMO games have some of the best entertainment dollar value, IF you only play one game. When I played WoW, I was doing better than seeing 2 2.5 hour movies every month for the $15 I spent as far as time per dollar. However I made the choice to pay for XBL instead. The cost adjustment worked out to pay for a full year of live and two new games a year. I could probably due without XBL if I wasn't playing with friends over it all the time.

StarCraft2 has been sucking up a lot of my time.



I vote to move this to the Game forum

Every vote counts and since there was only one I moved the thread.

And Starcraft 2 is under Activision's umbrella now in a manner of speaking, so what if Blizzard starts to charge you $15/month to play Starcraft 3? Not trying to be a doomsayer just sayin' we need to make a statement with our wallets.

NO way in HELL would i pay a subscription fee to play FPS games,but i will and do pay the extra $15 for each map pack.

quite frankly i'm getting sick and tired of these console ports,and watching my CPU heat up,and my SLI GPU's just sitting there.

its getting to a point to not even build a badass rig anymore..it just pisses me off to some degree.

the pc community needs more games like Crysis and Metro 2033..hell even Crysis 2 is just a cheap console port.

even Tomb Raider underworld heats up my GPU's to some degree.

i guess i'll have to wait and see about BBC 3.

I was already annoyed they took out LAN play. It seriously was detrimental at our last LAN party.

If ActiBliz starts charging monthly for SC2, then I'd quit playing.

Ya no LAN play is a bummer.

Yea, pretty much every game should have some sort of LAN play, especially strategy games.

Oblivion would have been fun as heck with LAN play.

Why in the world people pay attention to Michael Pachter? it's beyond me. The dude makes a living making stuff for investors, 90% of what he says is from a business point of view, which may or not be related to what the industry will do.

Regarding paid COD multiplayer, we can pretty much agree it's a stupid idea that won't work, but that doesn' stop companies to think about it from time to time, specially when you see the 12 million people paying Blizzard for their WoW fix.

People working at Activision and EA aren't stupids, they realize there will be a backlash if they suddenly try this. They'll eventually try, but on parts, first the service will be free, then they'll add more stuff and will make it freemium, and in their ideal world it'd be a subscription. It's on us as consumers to stop them on their tracks by not buying anymore when they get too greedy.

WoW is an entirely different thing though. There is lots and LOTS of content and the game environment supports the pay to play model. If I only payed one game, it would probably be an MMO of some kind.

I am going to try TOR when it comes out.

Other games don't lend themselves to pay to play and if they did it anyway, I'd just not pay it.

How about we let Activision continue on their merry way doing whatever they want? Then when they're hemorrhaging money, they'll learn a lesson. And if not, who cares? What games do they even make? Warcraft, Guitar Hero and CoD is basically it, right?

No....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision_Blizzard

Oh, sorry. "And Spyro, Popeye, Tony Hawk and Transformers".

I want an updated version of "The Lost Vikings", dammit!

Well, looks like they went straight into the freemium crap

Yay or nay? Personally I won't be giving more money to Activision, I don't want them to think it's a good idea to move into the paid multiplayer.

lol @ that link Pato,

That made me lol too

Nathan Grayson is one of the best video games writers around, imho the most underrated one.