Rumor: Subscription fee for Call of Duty just around the corner

A video showing what appears to be the ‘membership plan’ for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been leaked onto the internet.

A member on 360Junkies posted the video in the site’s forums, and assuming that it is not fake- it does indeed look like we may soon have to pay for the privelige of playing Call of Duty online.

The video appears to show that the subscription will be payed in Microsoft Points on the Xbox.

I was trying to join a friend’s session on MW2 the other day and had this screen pop up. It clearly says at the top of this menu: “Modern Warfare 2 Membersh”, in which we can confidently assume that the last word is “Memberships”. If you’ll notice at the bottom is an option to “Add Microsoft Points”, clearly indicating that this was intended to be a menu for purchasing different levels of Membership, presumably memberships would have been offered in a variety of durations.

The rumor isn’t without basis either- Michael Pachter recently stated that he believes subscription models should be added to online games, with Activision and Call of Duty as the pioneers.

The statements followed after the NPD results released at the beginning of July showed a 6% decrease in video game revenue.

“We think that the overall decline was due to a very large number of people playing multiplayer online games for free on PlayStation Network, and for an annual fee with unlimited game play on Xbox Live,” said Pachter.

It shall remain to be seen how the public react to pay-per-play subscriptions for their favourite online games