Activision says gamers should expect to see World of Warcraft-style pay-to-play systems transitioning to other games, including Call of Duty. Surprisingly, this isn’t coming from Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, but rather the company’s CFO, Thomas Tippl. “It’s definitely an aspiration that we see potential in, particularly as we look at different business models to monetize the online gameplay,” said Tippl at yesterday’s BMO Capital Markets Conference . “There’s good knowledge exchange happening between the Blizzard folks and our online guys.”
“We have great experience also on Call of Duty with the success we had on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. A lot of that knowledge is getting actually built into the Battle.Net platform and the design of that,” added Tippl.
“I think it’s been mutually beneficial, and you should expect us to test and ultimately launch additional online monetization models of some of some of our biggest franchises like Call of Duty.”
If that doesn’t infuriate you enough, he was also bold enough to say that there is a demand from the company’s fanbase to pay for more services, saying, “Our gamers are telling us there’s lots of services and innovation they would like to see that they’re not getting yet. From what we see so far, additional content, as well as all the services Blizzard is offering, is that there is demand from the core gamers to pay up for that.”