Strategize on the go

THE BUZZ: The Call of Duty: Elite pay service, meant to enrich players’ social experiences with the franchise and which is currently in beta through Black Ops, will be fully integrated with MW3 and available for use on your smart phones and your home consoles and will allow the hardcore of the hardcore to take their Call of Duty experiences to new levels.

WHAT WE KNOW: Aside from tracking hundreds of your stats and allowing you to build clans as previously revealed, for players who sign up to Call of Duty: Elite there will also be apps for the service available on consoles and smart phones that will allow you to customize your load outs from anywhere. You can also show off your stats to your friends and go over strategies from some of your best (or worst) matches so you can see where you went wrong and how to fix it for next time. On top of this, Elite players will get access to MW3 DLC before other players and it comes with the cost of the service. Whereas regular players would have to buy four maps at a time and spend $60 a year on DLC, the Elite players will have the new maps released one at a time, once a month, to give a feel of constantly flowing new content, for paying $50 up front for the service. There will also be clan tournaments conducted through the service for prizes, exclusive video content, and expanded server room to allow up to eight hours of footage to be recorded and uploaded by Elite members.

EGM’S TAKE: For the ultimate Call of Duty fan, this is the ultimate experience. Being able to customize your load outs at school or at work, getting DLC before everyone else, and having even more of a stage to brag about your best frag will empower fans like never before. Considering the service is $50 a year, and as pointed out by Infinity Ward Creative Strategist Robert Bowling that it would normally cost a lot of the hardcore fans $60 for the DLC part of this anyway, this seems like a win-win for a lot of players and should encourage even more folks to sign up for the service.