The people who publish Call of Duty have been talking about their plans to bring more players into the online multiplayer fold, specifically targeting Asian players. Today, Activision finally divulged some details on its Chinese Call of Duty plans.
Activision plans to follow the model made successful by countless MMOs and first-person shooters targeted at Asian players, making the unnamed Call of Duty spin-off a free-to-play, microtransaction-based online multiplayer game. That could mean bite-sized purchases of perks, weapons and maps for Chinese players, instead of using solely an experience-based progression system to unlock those items.
The company has talked about targeting China and Korea with Call of Duty content for the past year, but has been quiet on specifics.
The Call of Duty business is also getting an "innovative new digital platform" and a "best in class online community" thanks to a newly established studio, Beachhead, announced by Activision today.
For the rest of us who prefer to drop sixty bucks or more on our Call of Duty games, Activision has another major entry planned for 2011, rumored to be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. A futuristic entry in the series, complete with space marines, is also rumored.