Also for those people saying "we already pay for Xbox live" I have a feeling that one of the reasons Xbox live went up was that when Activision likely institutes a pay online model it'll be free (or cheaper) for Xbox Live Gold members.

What free content is he talking about with the Call of Duty series?  Does he mean the game actually comes with maps and levels and modes?

if activision start charging a subscription fee, they can't charge for dlc like map packs and stuff which i think gives them more money. reason being with a subscription fee they would loose a lot of their fan base, atleast 60%. which mean a lot less people buying dlc.

if the whole industry started charging a subscription fee then they could charge for dlc BUT that would just lead people to playing a mmo. you can find an mmo for pretty much any genre (fps, racing, ect).

also the reason cod is so popular is because of friends. if they charge for online and loose a big part of their player base. there will be less people promoting how good the game is when they hang out with friends or have a party. also if your friend doesn't want to play "that" game because he/she doesn't want to pay a subscription fee or can afford it, how likely are you to pick it up instead of picking up a game you can both play?

I agree with Patcher, but the model its what can be discussed, here is a way to do it...

Don't charge for basic online play and put a limit to either the time you can play for free or the level the character can reach, that way everybody can still play online multiplayer online for free, just not everything or forever.

Then you start charging 5 dollars a month for the possibility of using some special modes, play any amount of time or to reach any level, those users that pay every month get the new DLC maps for free.

There are other options to make more money out of the game...

Sell the single player game alone for less money (its usually a 6-8 hours long campaign) around 40 dollars seems fine, this should include single player and 2 player co-op. Then sell the multiplayer modes alone for another 40 dollars. The customer that only buy the game to play online will pay less, and the one that only uses the single player will pay less, only those that want both things will pay more.

Keep doing the same thing they had done till now, but tell Microsoft to rise the price the Live fee 5 dollars a year if the Live suscriber wants to play Call of Duty titles, and start charging the same 5 dollars a year to PS3 players. Its not a big raise so the players will be willing to pay it, and it could mean extra 50 - 100 millions a year, all for Activision.

Business-wise Pachter may be right. We will never know. And neither will anybody wise. He could definitely be wrong but we will never know.

Personally. I want everything to be free so adding cost to anything is a negative...  But, if it's reasonable. I'll pay. I don't like COD so me personally buying the game is unreasonable.

Pissed off, no. Same view-point no.

Depends how much Activision would charge. The most I'd pay is maybe $50 for a year of Black Ops. I will say that I'd expect even more patches/updated though if we have to pay for online. Treyarch does a good job already but they'd need to listen to the community even more.

Also if we pay for online that should subsidize the cost of map packs. I'm thinking no more than $5 for a map pack on top of a yearly/monthly fee.

Like Zenfoldor said, unless a game is going to have as much content as WoW then I will pay. If otherwise, I will not pay a cent to play CoD. I can simply skip it all.

All these additional profits from a subscription model assume that the number of people who buy the actual game, as well as DLC because they already have the game, will stay the same. I don't see it turning out like that.

Marginal rise in profits and severe decrease of popularity are way more likely, and the genre isn't exactly under-represented.
Not that Pachter makes me upset though, it won't affect me in any way.

I think MS would have words with whomever tried to get subscription based online play going on XBL. Somehow I think XBL users would have a long hard think about paying for both XBL and online pay to play subscriptions.

PSN users might be a tad bit more willing to consider it, given they aren't paying anything right now, but that's the way we like it right? MW2 retailed here for $140. Many new release games retail for about $100.

Seems to me that selling extra content is the way to go.

Of course the free software model is that you get the software for cheap or nothing, then you pay for the services and infrastructure required for you to use the software. I betcha if Acti decided to sell the next CoD for $15US and charge $10 per month for online play they'd end up making more money per game sold than selling for a straight $60. And they'd sell a shit ton of games too, making MW2 and BO sales look like Deadly Premonition sales. I bet even if they dropped the retail price to $45US at the same time as introducing a monthly online subscription the game sales and online useage would still be huge.

COD is a really good game but not that good that i would pay a subsciption for it.

people supported XBL in taking away free online play so i bet a lot of nutters will do the same for this.