Call of Duty: Elite to Enhance Online Gaming

It’s not a game, and it’s not an MMO. Activision‘s new Call of Duty Elite is an “online service,” similar to Halo‘s Waypoint or Bungie.net, enhancing gamers’ multiplayer experience within the CoD franchise and offering expert tips and endless interactive features for the hardcore faithful.

The idea behind Elite is that while players already spend a large part of their daily free time playing CoD online, this huge community has no networking tools to take full advantage of that experience. And players will be able to access CoDE from not only their game console but from the Web and mobile devices like their iPhone or Android phone.

One of the key features of the new service is the ability to create and join clans and groups, so that you can play against other community members of equal skill, or even your friends or demographic group. Activision plans to schedule regular events and competitions for Elite members, and another tier of the service will provide players with in-depth coaching and strategizing on how to improve their performance. Stats will be tracked dynamically — across all future Call of Duty titles, starting with Modern Warfare 3 — so that you can see for yourself how your performance improves or declines, what your strengths are, what you should work harder at developing, and so on.

A beta for Call of Duty Elite will take place this summer (sign up here), in preparation for the service’s full launch alongside Modern Warfare 3 in November.