[Najaf]

I found this nugget buried at the end of a seemingly innocent article on how Steve Jobs told Kotick to quite college.

From: The Wall Street Journal

WSJ: If you could snap your fingers, and instantly make one change in your company, what would it be, and why? Mr. Kotick: I would have Call of Duty be an online subscription service tomorrow. When you think about what the audience's interests are and how you could really satisfy bigger audiences with more inspired, creative opportunities, I would love to see us have an online Call of Duty world. I think our players would just have so much of a more compelling experience. WSJ: Is that coming? Mr. Kotick: Hopefully. WSJ: Are the customers ready for it? Mr. Kotick: I think our audiences are clamoring for it. If you look at what they're playing on Xbox Live today, we've had 1.7 billion hours of multiplayer play on Live. I think we could do a lot more to really satisfy the interests of the customers. I think we could create so many things, and make the game even more fun to play. We haven't really had a chance to do that yet, so that would be my snap of the fingers.

[darkwing]

if i didn't know any better i bet he wishes he had more monies

[Mush]

Oh fuck.

[highluxury]

Mr. Kotick: I think our audiences are clamoring for it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

eat shit kotick.

[TheGreatDave]

:lol He's like a cartoon villain.

[KZObsessed]

LOL

[eznark]

Pretty much is. $15 map packs every few months accomplishes most of that I would think.

Of course, those won't go away once a subscription is enacted. People will definitely pay it, so I have no problem with it.

[Cosmonaut X]

World of Call of Duty incoming!

[-viper-]

What the fuck does he mean by that?

Is he trying to tell us the consumers WANT TO PAY MORE MONEY?

Kotick and co can suck my balls if they think they are going to charge for online play in COD.

[Holtz]

Holy shit, he is absolutely shameless. :lol

[Pagusas]

so the COD audience is clambering to spend MORE money to play there game online? F@#@ you COD audience. @$@% you.

[Augemitbutter]

they don't deserve better

[The Lamonster]

Real classy, guy.

[Vic]

Gotta milk that cow dry son!

[highluxury]

Do you guys believe in the supernatural? Cause I swear to god its as if Riccitiello's former EA demon spirit jumped into Kotick.

[Gomu Gomu]

If I could snap my fingers, and instantly make one change in this industry, I would get Koteck to choke on a $50 bill.

[Empty]

he was probably upset that riccitello was making moves to threaten him in the anti-consumer stakes yesterday, so had to balance the scales.

[lljride]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA eat shit kotick.

For real, that's the greatest quote since the Konami conference. I can't believe that came out of that man's mouth.:lol

[CcrooK]

$775 million dollars later?

[Nemo]

Do you have the part about Jobs convincing him to quit college and start his company?

[eznark]

I don't see why everyone is shocked. Every single publisher would love to be able to make their games a subscription based platform, the difference here is that Kotick and CoD will absolutely be able to make it work.

Thank God I think the games are shit.

[Salaadin]

Its so hard to believe that one guy can be this dumb...but here he is again reconfirming it. :lol

[macksplack]

i hope they do this so the franchise will completely be dead

[Lijik]

"Man you guys I thought I was one of the rebel pilots the whole time, but I wake up and suddenly I'm on the Death Star!"

Whatever Kotick, stay classy

[qwerty2k]

so smug that i hate fps games. Really don't get why people bum COD so much, i hate fps games but so many others are far more enjoyable, for me counter-strike 1.1 (which was the pinnacle fwiw) is buckets more fun than COD.

[CadetMahoney]

*grabs ankles* for Kotick

[DonMigs85]

This guy is like a real-life Scrooge McDuck. Such greed

[Najaf]

Do you have the part about Jobs convincing him to quit college and start his company?

Link

[Cornbread78]

great, now we can have a true MMO style Camp fest..... YAY!
Lets take an unbalance game and make you pay for it, because "dammit, it's a privilege for you to be playing our CoD masterpieces you dirty peasants... pay more for, especially you, the M$ gamers; we gave you timed DLC, now pay more to play our game the shooter-centric western gamers.......!"


Can anyone else see him on his throne saying this?

[krae_man]

Umm, you guys do know he means also providing more content/value along with the subscription model right?

It's not just take next years boxed retail copy and charge a monthly fee to play it.

He's not gonna just pocked all of the extra revenue.

oops, I mean Fuck Kotick.

[loosus]

Yeah, I'm sure your audience wants to pay more money. :lol Good grief.

If they pay for it, it'll be reluctantly, not because they want to. And I have my doubts about whether they will.

[KingDizzi]

if i didn't know any better i bet he wishes he had more monies

He deserves every penny, great man has made me a whole lot of money in the last few years. God bless you Bobby Kotick, love you.

[YuriLowell]

Map Packs every month for 15 dollars is a subscription suckas.

[X-Frame]

They do this, and I would be happy to never buy another COD game again - especially since most shooters out now surpass it.

[Nemo]

Wall Street Journal

Says to subscribe, do you have to pay money?

[dskillzhtown]

Holy shit, he is absolutely shameless. :lol

I don't mind him trying to make as much money as he can, that is his job.

But I don't see how you can have an annual COD release schedule along side a COD MMO. I do think that a COD MMO could work though. I would guess the benefot would be a steady income with no yearly promotion blitz needed. But not sure that steady stream will equal the dollars of a yearly release. It would be an interesting experiment. Especially since I would think that a chunk of COD players don't have their own credit cards.

[Y2Kev]

So do it. What are you waiting for?

[brandonh83]

So do it. What are you waiting for?

Yeah, what's stopping him? Fan feedback? :lol

[C-Jo]

It's like he's running some kind of business or something.

[derder]

Says to subscribe, do you have to pay money?

looooooooooool

[TheApatheticOne]

I usually dont even reply to stuff like this but the "Are Cod fans ready to pay more?"...

"I think our audiences are clamoring for it."

Seriously Clark?

[Technosteve]

Day one sub, ganking fools with my kill streaks oh yeah. Let me show you my knifing style biatch

[eznark]

Drop the single player, release it for $30 and include a $9.99 monthly. It will make an absolutely absurd amount of money. They are already creating old maps in the new engine and have what, 6 games worth of multiplayer maps that they can mine for content? They'd be stupid to not do it.

I firmly believe it's the way many, many games will be going in the future. Listen to last week's Gamers With Jobs podcast for an even bleaker picture.

[carlo6529]

The day they start charging a montly fee for call of duty games, is the day I stop buying call of duty games.

[dejan]

Don't listen to the naysayers, just do it Bobby. And the earlier the better.

[DataBot]

After the shitty disaster with the PC version of MW2, with cheaters everywhere and no dedicated servers.
This was my last COD game ever and i wont buy any dlc for it.

[highluxury]

So do it. What are you waiting for?

I'd love to hear what he has to say when the well will finally run dry.:lol

[Castor Krieg]

I love how first Kotaku runs ass-licking "interview" with the man just before E3, where he comes out as a great person and a guy really passionate about things (and a bit of a techie as well :P), and then a week later this shit happens.:lol

Keep the journalist integrity alive, Kotaku :P

[Najaf]

Says to subscribe, do you have to pay money?

Strange. I linked to it off of my Activision stock ticker. Here is the appropriate part. He goes on to talk about being taken under Steve Wynn's wing and whatnot. Yes; that Steve Wynn.

WSJ: What's the best career advice you've gotten, and why? Mr. Kotick: I've been very, very lucky, because I've had so many great mentors. Very early on, when I was in my twenties, Steve Jobs convinced me to quit college. He talked to me after I had spent about a year in Michigan, studying the history of art. I don't think he would even remember some of the things that he said. They were so insightful. One thing he said was, "You're studying the history of art. You don't even get to see the paintings. Why would you be doing that? You have a company, you're making Apple software, and you're an entrepreneur. Don't waste your time on college. Go, run your company." And that was really good advice. I quit college, and I started this company, so that was great.

[Leonsito]

Maybe he meant a FREE online subscription :D