GameStop has revealed via an earnings call yesterday that Activision’s Call of Duty Elite service has sold approximately 600,000 memberships at its retail locations, making it a top 10 launch for the chain.
“In the case of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, we worked closely with Activision, Sony and Microsoft to pre-order and deliver nearly 600,000 instances of the Modern Warfare Elite DLC to date,” said GameStop President Tony Bartel. “This places the launch of Elite as one of our top 10 launches of the year so far.”
The paid membership of Call of Duty Elite runs purchasers $50 a year and earns them monthly DLC, competitions with prizes, early access to new game features, and more. Though there are options for buying the product online via consoles or registering for free without perks, GameStop appears to be pushing the service in their stores well.
“We’ve found that consumer demand for downloadable content is very strong at the point of launch,” said Bartel. “…Based on our research we know that one half of the DLC we sell is to customers that have never purchased DLC before.”
While Elite has been a financial success, the system itself has dealt with stability issues on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 with the release of a mobile app and PC version still up in the air.
Modern Warfare 3 has also seen a ton of success, selling 6.5 million units in the first 24 hours and grossing over $775 million in its first five days.
