What will a company do with a video game series that has generated billions of dollars in revenue and beats the hell out of any blockbuster Hollywood movie whenever they come out with a new version? Simple: extract more money from the patrons, milk them, until they cry foul. That, according to some online gaming people are saying with the planned premium Call of Duty Elite service.

To be launched in Summer 2011, Call of Duty Elite is stat-tracker with social networking features. It has free basic services, but once you avail of the other features of the service, you have to pay for the "premiums".  The stat-tracking, or leaderboard tracker, is said to be very meticulous, providing details on how a player progresses through Call of Duty Elite including views of maps, and weapons information. The social networking feature allows you to connect to other players that you really want to connect with, such as friends, classmates, co-workers, and of course, meeting other players.

There will tournaments for different skill levels where players can compete for real world and virtual prizes. This means that clans and individual players can hone their skills further with the prospect of winning prizes.

Some sectors call the paid for premium service (no monthly subscription price mentioned yet by Activision but is rumoured to be at the US$7.99 or £4.84 per month), with some calling for protests as shown in the Gunn Shop video below:

For paying already a high price for the Call of Duty titles, which until now still maintain their release day prices, players are miffed by this that they are already showing their displeasure by putting their dislike at the "Call of Duty The Legend of Karl Trailer" which far outnumber the number of likes. As of this writing, there are over 17,000 dislikes as compared to 5,000 likes. (You will need to sign-n at Youtube to view this and to show your like/dislike.)

Perhaps this is a reaction that would soon blow over when the the service gets released. However, with other services already charging for online gaming, such as Xbox Live, players don't want to be bothered by another gaming service that they have already paid for at the gaming store or via online downloads.

What is said is that the social networking service would protect the LGBT community who are also avid gamers, since many players tend to do a lot of swearing and cursing, hurling out homophobic and racist rants whilst playing, which should be a good thing, as I do cringe and get into online shouting matches from players who commit such anti-social acts without putting much thought into what they say.

At the end of the day, we have to remind ourselves that it is a business, with costs to maintain the networking infrastructure to accommodate thousands of players to play simultaneously in various maps and tournaments. Is the pricing excessive? We cannot say, but it will surely kick out many players unable to afford the premium services, especially those without any means of income such as students. However, Activision still provides the Call of Duty Gaming Elite basic services for those who can't pay the  monthly subscription price.

We can all speculate if this service would be successful or not until it gets released this Summer. But if you want to protest the monthly subscription fee for the premium service, then you are free to do so. Who knows? Activision might listen and would do away with the fee altogether.

But what I can say is that it's wishful thinking.