Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 publisher Activision has announced that new downloadable content for premium subscribers to Activision’s “Call of Duty Elite” online service will begin rolling out for the Xbox 360 version of Modern Warfare 3 on January 24th. This will kick off what Activision is calling the Modern Warfare 3 Content Season, in which premium subscribers will continue receiving regular content updates for the next nine months. In keeping with the apparently sacred and unbreakable gaming industry tradition of giving people who play on other platforms the short end of as many sticks as possible, no release date has been announced for the PlayStation 3 or PC versions of the game as of yet.
The first downloadable releases will be two new multiplayer maps entitled “Liberation” and “Piazza.” The former is said to be a large, expansive area suited to long-range battles, while the latter is a much more confined environment suited to close combat and surprise attacks. Activision says there are plans for a total of at least 20 new content releases for premium users over the next nine months, with future updates including more multiplayer maps as well as things such as new gameplay modes and new missions for the game’s single-player/co-op “Special Ops” mode. Premium subscribers will also be eligible to win prizes in a series of contests Activision will be having over this period.
The premium content will eventually be made available for non-premium Elite users to purchase separately, though presumably buying all of it in that fashion would end up costing more than the $49.99 that a premium subscription to the Elite service costs. I can’t imagine spending that kind of money for upgrades to a single game’s multiplayer mode, though I’m 1. not much of a multiplayer gamer, 2. not a huge Call of Duty fan, and 3. extremely cheap, so I’m not really the target market.
Hopefully Activision has learned from the embarrassing debacle that ensued last year when the Elite service went down for most users when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was released on November 8 and mostly stayed down for nearly a month after Activision’s servers were overwhelmed by the sheer number of people trying to log in at the same time. The number of people who are subscribers to Elite’s paid premium service is much smaller than the total number of Call of Duty Elite users as a while, since the basic service is free for anyone who owns Modern Warfare 3, so these content updates shouldn’t cause quite the sort of server-shattering stampede that the release of the game itself did.
Then again, I had previously assumed that Activision would have the foresight to make sure that their online system could handle the huge influx of users that they must have known would be coming when they released the enormously hyped sequel to the game that had the biggest first-day sales of all time back in November, or at least make it sturdy enough that it wouldn’t be knocked out for over three weeks by it, so my prediction track record might not inspire much confidence.
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