Four million people have signed up to use Call of Duty Elite — and a full million of them believe in it enough to have ponied up cash. Activision announced that a million premium memberships have been purchased already. By contrast, it took Xbox Live, Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Sirius XM roughly a year each to hit that milestone.
I know the launch issues have been frustrating to everyone, and the team has made great progress on those, but I really do think Elite is worth it. I think the service really does offer value to gamers who like playing Call of Duty on a regular basis, who want hassle-free DLC, and who want to take part in the social and competitive communities.
When Elite was announced…well, this video typifies the unbridled outrage at what would ultimately be revealed as a discount on DLC, structured clans, and Hollywood entertainment content. Indignation was the hot summer accessory for gamers (and apparently it still is for that guy or he’d have taken the video down). I can’t tell you how happy I am to see that a million people were not only patient enough to get the facts but liked what they saw enough to say “Yes, that’s worth it for me.” I think they’ll get good value in the coming year.
And I strongly suspect that, once everything is stable and running as it was designed to run, the greatest sign of Elite’s success will be people taking it for granted, just as they do with Netflix and Xbox Live and those other popular services. Invisible ubiquity is a bittersweet victory.
