´Call of Duty Elite´ interview

One week before our next installment of my new show about competitive gaming, FTW - For the Win, you can watch my interview with Noah Heller from Beachhead Studios and Mark Cox from Activision in full right here.

´Call of Duty Elite´ is meant to be a social community for Call of Duty players where they can connect, improve their skills, compare statistics and get in-depth information about pretty much every detail of the game. The service is split into a free part and a premium one. Clearly, Activision wants ´Call of Duty´ to play a bigger role in competitive gaming.

Heller and Cox are naturally excited about the platform. But I notice a growing trend towards social communities built around games. Soon, there will be an abundance of such networks, with Crytek launching GFACE, Zynga pushing its own Facebook-clone, the German-based Travian Games launching MYGAME and Azubu already on the market. Consolidation is inevitable.

Also, many experts are skeptical whether ´Call of Duty´ can become relevant in eSports. There is more to it than throwing lots of money at it by hosting a competitive event such as XP late last year, where the winning team walked away with a million Dollars. After all, last year saw ´Brink´ being marketed as the new ´Counter-Strike´ and where is that title today? There is lots to talk about, so watch my interview right here and leave me some feedback in the comments, if you will.