If you thought Activision would have chilled out on the idea of an MMO-like structure for Call of Duty beyond CEO Bobby Kotick's statements to that effect in June, think again. In a fresher interview with the Financial Times, Kotick spoke to the fact again that Activision receives nothing in return for people playing Call of Duty over Xbox Live, going so far as to say that his company's war games are the reason around 60-percent of subscribers have subscribed to Live.
"We’ve heard that 60 per cent of [Microsoft’s] subscribers are principally on Live because of Call of Duty,” Kotick told FT. “We don’t really participate financially in that income stream. We would really like to be able to provide much more value to those millions of players playing on Live, but it’s not our network."
As Kotaku notes, Activision Blizzard knows full well the value of an MMO structure, considering that they're owners of World of Warcraft, the most successful MMO to date.
== TEASER ==Rumors and surveys indicating an MMO structure is coming to Call of Duty have been circulating since the dawn of man. Kotick himself has stated his desire to flip the system on numerous occasions. In June, in a conversation with The Wall Street Journal, Kotick didn't hold back on the subject.
"I would have Call of Duty be an online subscription service tomorrow," Kotick said. "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."
He said "audiences are clamoring" for the system, which I would assume they would be if Activision actually worked in value within the structure.
Here's a funny idea: perhaps this Call of Duty MMO--which may or may not ever happen--will be dropped onto a straight-to-TV PC.
Kotick is still stuck on the idea of plug-and-play TV PC devices, or I suppose, mini-consoles. According to Kotick, Activision is primed to "aggressively support" Dell and HP in their endeavor to connect PCs to TVs. Dropping games on these is a hell of a go-around, for sure, but it's one Kotick likes. Using these boxes would kick the need to rely on Xbox Live, or even conventional digital distribution. Plus, it could expand the player base.
"We have always been platform agnostic,” Kotick told FT. “[Consoles] do a very good job of supporting the gamer. If we are going to broaden our audiences, we are going to need to have other devices.”
I'm not sure if we'll ever see a Call of Duty MMO. But I am pretty sure we won't see one on this generation of consoles--unless, of course, every publisher begins clamoring for a piece of the money pie from subscription-based networks held by a lone publisher.