Call of Duty: Elite still has secrets
Activision purposely held things back.
You ain't seen all of Call of Duty: Elite yet - Activision's got some aces up its sleeve.
"I will say this: we were not ready to reveal the entire feature set of the service because a lot of it is embedded into Modern Warfare 3," teased Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg, speaking to Gamasutra.
"So what we revealed was incomplete and we did create some confusion.
"We're not ready to reveal everything yet," he added. "We're going to have a better service at launch because we're going to be able to polish it and refine it through the beta. We made the right choice."
Hirshberg said there wasn't any way Activision could have "messaged" Elite better and gotten a better response from core gamers.
Call of Duty: Elite expands the multiplayer experience through social networking, stat tracking and shared content such as videos. There will be an optional premium subscription on top of a base, free service.
More than two million people have signed up for Call of Duty: Elite now.
One very vocal non-fan of Call of Duty: Elite is EA. John Riccitiello, EA boss, said Activision fluffed the Elite announcement. He then fired off a broader attack at Activision's genre leading shooter series by saying he hopes it will "rot from the core".
"They're obviously trying to draw a response," said Hirshberg. "That would be great for them."
"They've talked about our game in the press more than we have. That's obviously strategic. That's obviously a decision they've made. But I don't want to swing at a pitch in the dirt.
"I'm being genuine when I say we want to focus on our games. There's no road to success for us that does not include us making a phenomenal game and delighting and satisfying our fans. That's what we're focused on.
"We have absolutely no control over Battlefield, Gears of War, whatever Microsoft does next with Halo. That's all venerable competition. But we are one hundred percent focused on making the best game we can."
Battlefield 3 lost some of its fan-darling sheen over the weekend after console footage of the shooter was confirmed to be 720p and running at 30fps. Crucially, Modern Warfare 3 (and previous COD games) will run at 60fps.