The Latest On Call of Duty Elite

In November, Activision hoped to have Call of Duty Elite fully operational by the end of the month after a very rocky launch. At the time, many users were unable to register and log into the service, but now things have settled down and Elite has had its connection problems ironed out.

We recently contacted Activision with a few questions to get the latest on where Elite is and what users can expect down the road:

1. What’s the status on all version of Elite, including the PC version.

The service is up and running across the web, console and mobile platforms, and players are using it every day.  We rolled out the iOS smartphone application this week, and the Android version will be following next week. 

As with any service, we’re aware of a number of issues that have surfaced over the past 2 months – bugs that were revealed as a result of the massive scale we’ve reached now – and we’re working on closing those out as quickly as we can.  We’re also doing a better job of communicating those fixes to users as they go live.

And, it bears repeating, we are completely aware that users are eagerly awaiting Clan Operations.  Our entire team is focused on getting these up and running as quickly as we can.  As soon as they’re ready and tested, we’ll let the community know when they’re coming.

The PC version also remains a priority for the team.  We’re heads-down focused on development, and as soon as we have more information, we’ll let everyone know Elite’s status on PC.

2. How frequent will updates for Elite be going forward?

Since launch, we’ve been on a pretty frequent update schedule as required by service demands – sometimes multiple times per week.  Since then, we’ve ranged in frequency of update from once a week to, in some cases, multiple weeks between updates.  At a minimum, to support the DLC drops, we’ll need to be updating once a month, but we’ll likely be introducing improvements at an even more frequent pace in the coming months.  As users have seen already, new content has been available on some of the Elite TV shows as frequently as each week.

3. How has the player reaction been since launch until now? Has user activity been steady throughout or erratic over the past two months?

Player reaction has been extremely passionate in both directions.  There are users who have told us how much they love certain pieces of functionality, and there have been others who have complained vehemently about their favorite features not being available yet.  The Call of Duty community is one of the most passionate in gaming, and they will always tell you what they want – or what they like or don’t like. 

Activity on any 24/7 service falls into a steady pattern pretty quickly.  We can watch usage by players around the clock and we can see clear regular patterns of user activity, with spikes occurring during events like special competitions, promotions, DLC updates, or new platform releases or updates (like mobile).  This is part of the reason we’re really excited about the new season of content for Elite subscribers.

On Jan 24th, the first drop arrives for MW3 Xbox 360 users -- Elite members will also be able to get information about the maps on Elite before they arrive.  We’ve built a dedicated section on the site with information about each drop as they occur throughout the year, so stay tuned.