Call of Duty: Elite Free in Black Ops 2, Season Pass Confirmed

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By Catherine Cai
published

Call of Duty: Elite, Activision's Call of Duty multiplayer subscription service for in-game stats and social networking, will be offered for free following the release of Black Ops II.

Though certain features for Elite have always been free, CoD players who wanted access to premium content had to pay $50 a year.

To make up for the costs of Elite going free, Activision is offering Black Ops 2 map DLC for a package deal of $50. Those who don't quite feel like purchasing a season pack can expect shell out $15 for each individual map pack, or $60 in total if each of these packs are purchased separately.

Unfortunately, Elite and the map packs may not come to every platform that Black Ops 2 is launching for, specifically the Wii U and PC. Elite will continue to remain on Xbox 360 and PS3, as it has been, and there've been no plans to release on PC. According to Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg, "Our goal is to bring the Season Pass and DLC to the Wii U also, but it's a new system and we need a bit more time to work out the details with Nintendo."  

New Elite features will also be rolling out, including zombie stat-tracking, Elite TV, and tablet support.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II will be launching for Windows, PS3, and Xbox 360 on November 13th, 2012 and November 18th, 2012 for the Wii U.

Catherine Cai
23 Comments Comment from the forums
  • amuffin
    Recycling is fun!
    Reply
  • so season pass is the new business model now?
    Reply
  • alidan
    remember the days of a few hundred maps on disc and people modded new maps into the game, you had full control over serves so if you wanted 128 player multiplayer, or thought you had a good enough mod for 256 you could to it... i miss those days...

    whats the game come with 12 maps at most? all the size of my house?
    Reply
  • alidan
    tomateso season pass is the new business model now?
    if you know there will be dlc, and you have a planned ammount, like borderlands 2, i see no problem with a season pass. its gives you all the content the day its released, some times sooner, for less money than buying it new...

    borderlands 2, first pass dlc was something like 8 hours long with an over leveled character beating the hell out of it. thats 8 hours where you 1 shot and dont need to worry (gametrailers invisible walls) so if you played it naturally, ill assume 8-10 hours, per character, per play though, which would give you about a 20 hour extention per character.

    see thats 10$ solo or 7.50 if you buy it in pack... and honestly, every 5$ i spend should get me minimum of 2 hours of fun, and borderlands 2 with 1 dlc managed almost pay for itself, and 3 more to go

    granted i look at this differently with a multiplayer fps (i never played borderlands 2 multiplayer, i just dont like that) because 15$ gets you 3 maps, when games use to ship with 30+ maps that were bigger than what they shove out now.
    Reply
  • assasin32
    alidanif you know there will be dlc, and you have a planned ammount, like borderlands 2, i see no problem with a season pass. its gives you all the content the day its released, some times sooner, for less money than buying it new...borderlands 2, first pass dlc was something like 8 hours long with an over leveled character beating the hell out of it. thats 8 hours where you 1 shot and dont need to worry (gametrailers invisible walls) so if you played it naturally, ill assume 8-10 hours, per character, per play though, which would give you about a 20 hour extention per character. see thats 10$ solo or 7.50 if you buy it in pack... and honestly, every 5$ i spend should get me minimum of 2 hours of fun, and borderlands 2 with 1 dlc managed almost pay for itself, and 3 more to gogranted i look at this differently with a multiplayer fps (i never played borderlands 2 multiplayer, i just dont like that) because 15$ gets you 3 maps, when games use to ship with 30+ maps that were bigger than what they shove out now.
    Borderlands is an example of DLC done properly it is ACTUAL CONTENT not just a lame map thrown together but actual content your paying for. At no point do I think paying the redicous money Activision is asking for their DLC is worth it, you get what from what maps, guns, mabey a new skin and thats in for their DLC for COD games and the like. Those kind of things use to be free updates and we use to have several player made maps which would make a lot of the newer players heads explode from excitement.

    UT2k4 for example came with a lot of maps, but than that map count increased dramatically after the modding community started and the people who put it out even made it easier for us by combining the best maps for us in map packs so we pretty all had the same maps to work with.

    I miss those days, as they seem to be mostly gone. So many companies have decided now to try to milk every last cent from us instead.
    Reply
  • ojas
    lol all i could understand from the article is that they want moar moniez
    Reply
  • alidan
    assasin32Borderlands is an example of DLC done properly it is ACTUAL CONTENT not just a lame map thrown together but actual content your paying for. At no point do I think paying the redicous money Activision is asking for their DLC is worth it, you get what from what maps, guns, mabey a new skin and thats in for their DLC for COD games and the like. Those kind of things use to be free updates and we use to have several player made maps which would make a lot of the newer players heads explode from excitement.UT2k4 for example came with a lot of maps, but than that map count increased dramatically after the modding community started and the people who put it out even made it easier for us by combining the best maps for us in map packs so we pretty all had the same maps to work with.I miss those days, as they seem to be mostly gone. So many companies have decided now to try to milk every last cent from us instead.
    i forgot to add that, that most of what they put out now use to be free back in the day... or with cd project red... one of the very few developers i respect any more. look at all they put out for free... god i miss the days when this was a common occurance.

    whats funny is that when anyone mentions those days, the common retort we get is "do you think they dont deserve money for their work" or "do you just want the whole game free" and i hear that crap from people in the games industry from reviewers to the developers.

    we use to get content for free. we use to get modable games, we remember those times and we stare at the industry today and wonder when the day will come that bug fixes are payed content.
    Reply
  • manofchalk
    Wasn't the point of Elite the free DLC (AKA, Map Packs) you received?
    This seems like a massive insult to the people who have already payed $50 for the premium content, and less than a year later its being offered for free. With the primary attraction of it (The DLC) now requiring payment again.
    Activision had better change strategies soon, they are going to kill off their one remaining golden goose.
    Reply
  • alidan
    manofchalkWasn't the point of Elite the free DLC (AKA, Map Packs) you received?This seems like a massive insult to the people who have already payed $50 for the premium content, and less than a year later its being offered for free. With the primary attraction of it (The DLC) now requiring payment again.Activision had better change strategies soon, they are going to kill off their one remaining golden goose.
    the way i, and most people saw elite was that it was just getting the maps cheaper/free/a little sooner than everyone else.

    they either decided that there is to much competition and elite should be free (from black ops 2 on) to give more incentive to buy cod,

    or they figured out that a monthly price point hampered the sales of dlc, as in, people didnt want to sign up for a monthly bill, and they dropped out of cod sooner than someone who may have gotten a season pass.

    if you want to look it from a positive light,

    elite was a test to see if they could charge a monthly rate for multiplayer, and that test failed.
    Reply
  • Pennanen
    As long as people let publisher do this, they will do it.

    I do not accept dlc, especially ones that are done before publishing the game.

    That is why i dont buy games that do this.
    Reply