Stefan Mileschin

Activision’s grand plan to create a Call of Duty social network, Call of Duty Elite, just ended its beta and will be up and running for consoles when Modern Warfare 3 releases next week. It will not, however, be ready for the PC.

Call of Duty Elite’s main appeal for fans of the franchise is the premium membership, which offers competitions, training videos, and $60 worth of DLC (in addition to all the free stat-tracking and social features) for $49.99. Beachhead has said that, while Activision will be selling map packs for the PC, they won’t be offering the premium Elite membership on PC anytime soon. And they are still working on the free version.

“The issue here is that the PC is an insecure platform,” Beachhead Studio’s Chacko Sonny told Activision blogger Dan Amrich. “Without a central, trusted resource for stats, a lot of our competition features become unfair. We can’t give away prizes when people can easily cheat their stats. Leaderboards are less fun when a lot of the users are there unfairly.”

Activision and the three studios behind Modern Warfare 3 (Beachhead included) haven’t shunned the PC audience entirely: dedicated servers will be supported at launch. But Call of Duty is a console franchise now, and Elite is a service designed to make money off that audience. Elite will come to the PC eventually, but they likely won’t rush it unless they’re sure they can monetize it.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5051/c...-delayed-on-pc