Introducing Call of Duty: Monthly Subscription

Bang! That's not the sound of a headshot from an AK-47. It's the sound of Activision, publishers of the world-storming Call of Duty franchise coming up with an idea that will change not just the company's fortunes, but the gaming landscape forever: Call of Duty: Elite.

Activision's new subscription model, which offers Call of Duty players bonus content in return for a monthly subscription fee is sure to spark a war of words as much as a gaming one.

Starting with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the latest entry into the blockbuster FPS franchise which releases this autumn, players will be given the option to sign up for a subscription to Call of Duty which will work with MW3 and all future COD games. In return for the monthly payment, players will get access to extra, exclusive maps as well as a stats service which shows them in depth which weapons they are having most success with.

It’s not known how much the charge will be yet, but this idea is, of course, from the company which runs World of Warcraft, an online role-playing game which can take £10-15 a month from each subscriber on top of the cost of the game.

Considering that MW3 costs an eye-watering £55 just for the disc, it seems more than a little excessive to start charging to play online, too.

Yes, the free service will stay in place. Players can still get online and shoot seven shades of shellshock out of one another for nothing. But the fact is, come this autumn there will be an exclusive section of the online community cordoned off – maps only subscribers can play, rooms teeming with pay-per-month customers who don’t want to mingle with the cheapo users.

It’s a worrying direction for gaming. We already have games which last at best, 5-10 hours in single-player, devoid of any split-screen multiplayer, with developers insisting the online modes (most of which are soulless clones of every other game’s online play) make up for the lack of meat elsewhere.

 As recently as five years ago, that wouldn’t have happened. PS2 games, for all their low-res, offline antiquatedness, had to deliver a compelling, lengthy experience and often a good split-screen mode to survive.
Fast forward to 2011 and we have games with content on the disc which you have to pay to access – DLC packs which were made as part of the main game, then locked out. Then they sell you the digital key to your own disc for £7.99. It’s absurd.

Now, Activision want to split the market entirely, into payers and non-payers. Sure, currently it’s only a few measly map packs and some data tracking. But if the idea catches on, expect what’s offered in the free zone to slowly diminish whilst the pay-for section gradually begins to resemble exactly what we used to get for free.

Sure, Activision are more than within their rights to do it. It’s a free market – and if people will pay, then Activision can – and in a pro-business sense sort of way – should offer it.

But embrace this future and we could suddenly see the glory years of free online play slide into yesteryear, much like PS2’s meaty single-player campaigns did. Show that we’re willing to stump up for one game, and every game developer will want to sell us a 12-month contract as well as a game.

Eventually, we’ll all buy one shooter (COD), one racer (NFS), one sports game (FIFA) and one action game (GTA) every year, subscribe to their online play and to hell with originality, innovation or indeed, free online. We’ll no be longer gamers, we’ll be loyal, contracted subscribers.

This may all sound like a ludicrous, exaggerated over-reaction. But MW3’s subscriber model is one small step away from this disastrous new reality. Don’t take that step. Step back, and throw up a middle finger, not a credit card.

Has PSN's downtime ruined the PS3?

At some point last week, PSN finally came back online after 22 days of PS3 gamers being left in the cold, offline wilderness.

It's back, but it's still a bit broken. Playstation Store is closed. The servers seem a bit jumpy, and my PlayStation Android app doesn't really, er, work.

Sony have promised that when PSN is fully functioning, owners can choose two of five free games to make up for that rather unfortunate matter of everyone's credit card details now sitting on the hard drive of some dark room dwelling borderline sociopath somewhere in Ohio.

On top of that, Sony PS President Kaz Hirai and his fellow executives apologised publically with a bow; a deeply significant gesture in Japan's culture of humility and integrity.

Too little, too late? Well, it might be. But we can't even get our free games yet, because the Store is still down.

The whole sorry episode has seen Sony shambling through problems like these. It's no wonder that PS3 trade-ins have increased an astonishing 200% since PSN went down, according to EDGE magazine, based on official retail figures.

PS3 had been having a good year until last month. Between exclusives like Gran Turismo 5, LittleBigPlanet 2 and the Uncharted 3 announcement, the PS3 was hot property. It even threatened to topple the Xbox 360's dominance, often overtaking it in sales.

They say a car is only as fast as its driver, though. Give Vettel a Red Bull F1 car, you get victory. Give me a Red Bull F1 car, and I'll give you an explosive, bloody mess, not a world championship.

Well, Sony ain't Vettel. They've driven the PS3 machine from a stable, advantageous position into the dirt track, and it may take a lot more than a couple of hand-outs of old games (LittleBigPlanet 1? Really?) to restore gamers' faith.

At the end of the day, we're all grown ups here. We don't hold certain companies or consoles in some beloved, quasi-weird position of love. We just want to game. It's understandable that many have probably defected to Microsoft's Xbox, where the online is always on and the credit card details always un-leaked.

To win over the gaming crowd again, Sony need to do something special - and I'm not sure they have it in them, any more than gamers have it in them to trust the company again.

E3, the annual games convention usually bursting with announcements, is only a couple of weeks away - and for PS3, it could be do or die.

Google Chromebook: The glorious future, not the glorious present

One day, we'll use the internet for absolutely everything. Every TV channel, every phone call, every time we watch a film or write a document, it will be online.

For some, that future could be in four months. That's when the first Chromebooks release; notebooks running Google's new Chrome operating system. It promises to revolutionise computing because every single application, everything it does and everything you do on it is done through the internet.

The advantage is that Chrome has no programs other than its built-in internet explorer. Nothing is running in the background, and it can't install anything, either. That means no viruses, and no bulky, slow anti-virus software, no hard drive, nothing. It can do pretty much whatever a normal notebook can - but it does it all via the web. It's proper 'cloud' computing.

As long as you're on Wi-fi, you can create a Google text document (no Microsoft Word here) then save it online, while playing your music collection on an internet-based music player using files from your online storage.

Here's Google's video, summing up exactly what the new OS offers:

Google's slogan is 'Ready when you are'. Thing is, when on earth will that be?

While most of America and Asia enjoys speeds of between 10MB/s and 100MB/s, much of the UK still runs at very poor broadband speeds - think 1-4MB. Imagine trying to stream a film, work on several word documents and browse the internet while Twitter is open in the background. Normally, a bad internet connection would struggle with that. But when the computer's every thought has to be piped down the internet and back every second, the wireless router will just explode at anything under 5MB/s. Unluckily for us, that's what most of the UK has.

Even if you have a good internet connetion, there's the problem of being out of Wi-fi range - and it's not just a problem for us Brits. Most computers are badly hindered by not having an internet connection, but at least you can work on documents and access your own music, video and photo collections. With a Chromebook, if you're offline, you've got nothing but an expensive paperweight.

Wi-fi hotspot coverage is improving all the time, of course. But it's still nowhere near what it needs to be to make a Chromebook anything approaching convenient.

Chromebook is undoubtedly a brilliant idea. It takes just eight seconds to start up, because it has no programs to load. If you lose it, or break it, well, all your files are online. Just buy another and you won't even notice the transition.

And buying another won't be so painful, either. Prices haven't been announced yet, but because a Chromebook is essentially an internet explorer with a Wi-fi card and a screen, they are going to be much, much cheaper than normal notebooks.

That means Chromebook could eat into Windows' marketshare quickly. If it's half the price, twice as fast and does everything a normal laptop can do, why wouldn't it take off?

Yup, it’s internet speed. It's a shame - and shameful - that the UK has such poor internet speeds. It lags far, far behind the rest of the world. But even in America, fast internet is nowhere near universal, and even if it was, Wi-fi hotspots aren't. And Chromebook's 100% dependence on them outside of the house makes it awkward, at best, to take on the road in 2011.

Chromebook is the future. Years down the line, it will be probably be how computing works, not just on notebooks but on phones, games consoles and TVs. But not yet. Not until internet companies and governments – especially in the UK- catch up with Google's ambition.

Skype's buyout: The end of free web calls?

Yesterday, Microsoft stunned the technology world by announcing it had bought up internet video chat company Skype for an eye-watering $8.5billion.

That's a lot of dollars. Enough to buy about a squillion M&Ms, according to some rough maths.

Skype, though, is a free service which makes very little money. Its only source of income is from a few small adverts placed in its side panel.

So why has the American tech giant spent so much cash on a company which produces free software? And more importantly, does this mean the end for Skype as we know it?

Currently, Skype is available on all platforms - including Apple's iPhone and Google's Android products. While Microsoft would be crazy to suddenly block all competitors, we can surely expect that the best new features will come to Microsoft's much-vaunted, much-overlooked Windows Phone first. Perhaps some features might even stay exclusive to Windows PCs and mobiles.

Non-Windows users' losses are Xbox players' gains, of course. Skype represents a great opportunity to add another string to Xbox's bow - video calls over Kinect, with voice control, is a perfect example of the different features of the games console coming together to offer something exciting.

And then of course there's Live Messenger, the age-old instant chat service once known as MSN. While it has been offering free video calls for years, it would be a big suprise if Microsoft didn't work in the Skype experience (which has always bested Bill Gates' program) into its software. We might even see Skype calls from inside Hotmail, in much the same way that the company has started working in a light, free version of Office into its email service for all users, regardless of whether they own the full suite. This image shows off quite well what Microsoft has in mind for the service in terms of merging it into its own offerings:

All of this is very nice and happy, but the acquisition could mean trouble ahead for non Windows Skype users. Should Microsoft try too hard to monetise Skype, they could find the people flocking to another service, whilst excluding Apple and Android users from any future features could see Skype's marketshare dwindle at a time Microsoft need it to start making real money.

On that subject; Microsoft might try to split the market, offering a free version with very low quality video, stripped down to the basics, and a pay-per-use version with all the bells and whistles.

Equally, they could ram the service with adverts. Imagine having to watch an ad for Burger King every time you rang your girlfriend, or sit through a very loud, very long Call of Duty trailer just to ask your mum how to cook an omelette. There could even be ads during calls: "We interrupt this heartfelt apology to the love of your life to bring you this important message: Have you had an accident at work?".

As the immortal line in the Social Network goes, at the moment, it's cool. Start throwing ads around and it's no longer a party.

Microsoft has to tread very carefully not to ruin a great service by desperately trying to squeeze money from it, nor anger users on non-Windows devices by treating them as second class.

The reality is, Microsoft's acquisition of Skype smacks of desperation. Unable to capture the market themselves, or perhaps wracked with paranoia that cooler, hipper Google or Apple were going to snap Skype up and rule the world, they jerked their knee and opened their wallet just to spite their competitors.

For Microsoft, it looks almost a lose-lose situation. Keep Skype the same and they'll never get back their investment. Change it too much and they risk alienating the users and, er, never getting back their investment.

Play it right, though, and Skype could be the cornerstone of Microsoft's latest assault on the market, taking a bite out of Apple and helping Windows Phone and Xbox to scale new heights.

Just dont ruin Skype please Bill. Unlike Windows Phone, it's quite good at the moment.

Kindle's coming to pulp the paperback book...

As digital book sales skyrocket, how far are we from the death knell of the paperback?

One day, you'll be telling your grandchildren about the days you used to read words printed on 'paper', in big, thick, heavy slabs known as 'books'. Shrugging, they'll put their virtual reality glasses on and keep reading.

For now, most of us still read the old fashioned way. But for how much longer?

The news this week surfaced that e-book sales are skyrocketing in the UK; up from just £4million last year to £16million. Add in academic books and the total reached £196million.

It is, of course, still a drop in the ocean compared to the £3.1Billion overall book sales - but the sector is growing. Fast.

The reason is obvious - e-books actually work now.

Most technology sells itself on offering something that you can't normally do without it. iPods offer all your music in one place. Smartphones pride themselves on organising your life, one app at a time. But e-book readers are different. Though they do offer something that books cant do (the ability to carry your whole library around on the go), in order to become mass market they actually need to do what books do, not try to better them.

In years past, we were forced to read digital versions of the latest novels on dim, clunky screens with very poor battery life. Vision problems and a time limit are not something we normally associate with a good read.

Then, Amazon cracked it. Their Kindle e-reader actually mimics the appearance of paper. No million-colour screen, no ultra-sharp LCD, no HD flash-bang gimmickry. Just a screen which looks, feels and behaves like paper. A un-technological approach to the technology, or a technological approach to the untechnological? Whatever, it works.

The battery life is eye-watering, too - a month with the wi-fi switched off. That means, just like a book, that you can shove it in your bag on every hotel stay/holiday or commute and not have to worry about whether you can finish your gripping thriller before the battery decides it doesn't care if you're three pages away from finding out who the killer was, it would quite like a nap.

The beauty is that they behave like books, but with advantages on top. Thousands of books in one place. Free versions of public-domain classics like Shakespeare, Dickens and Stevenson. Instant downloading on any internet connection and, of course, no pulling out the bookmark by accident and having to work out where you were by the number of fingerprints on the pages.

Now, other e-readers have copied the technology and people are starting to flock to digital books at long last.

This is a critical juncture for digital books. There are still stumbling blocks that must be manouvered. Why, for example, are some digital books more expensive than their paperback counterparts? Surely, with no distribution or printing costs, no stock management and no re-sale value (thus, no second-hand market), e-books should be much, much cheaper than normal books. Even the same price would be a rip-off, but digital versions are often more expensive. Until this is sorted, e-books will never be anything more than a niche market.

The number of titles, too, needs to be improved. People won't buy a Kindle if they can't read all the latest chart books on the same day as the normal versions are released. The choice is rising all the time, but the number of traditional books still outweighs digital offerings by thousands upon thousands to one.

Staunch traditionalists (read: old people) also argue that the feeling of reading a proper book just can't be beaten with any slab of wires and circuitry. Until a Kindle can mimic that 'new paper' smell, they still can't do everything.

Whether these issues can be fixed - or accepted - remains to be seen. The truth is, though, that we are still years away from waving goodbye to traditional ink 'n' paper. But the first chapter in the story of the book's demise might already be written.

When will FIFA give in over goal-line tech?

So, it's that time again. Time to ask FIFA why we still haven't got goal-line technology. Why the people (and the referees) inside the football stadium are less well-placed to take make or break, million pound decisions than people like me eating crisps and watching Sky Sports at home.

Yesterday, Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeer Heurelho Gomes fished a ball off the line and tried to insist the ball had never gone in. Cue a couple of minutes of confusion before the referee seemed to make a complete guess that the 'goal' should be given.

Watching it in super slow-mo on Match of The Day later that evening, you could tell that not all of the ball had crossed all of the line, as the goal rule dictates is necessary. Goal wrongly given, the game ends up 2-1 to Chelsea. The title race remains open and Tottenham might now miss out on a Champions League spot.

You can't blame the referee and his assistant for getting it wrong. In real-time, it's just impossible to say for sure what the right decision was. But had they seen the TV pictures, the game would have rightly ended 1-1.

So why are FIFA still dragging their heels over goal-line technology? It is a question which has been asked a hundred times, most notably in the World Cup game between England and Germany last year where Frank Lampard's five-yards-over-the-line goal wasn't given.

But it's a question we must keep asking. It is crazy that in 2011 we still can't use the technology we have at our disposal to help determine something crucial to the whole sport - like whether a goal is scored.

Video technology didn't do rugby any harm; a sport which has brilliantly adapted to modern times and blended traditional officiating with video evidence to the benefit of the game.

If video or goal-line technology is only brought in for goals (and maybe offsides), there's no reason at all it would slow football. We could even have a tennis-style system where each team gets three checks of the video every game.

Then there's the argument that it makes the game unequal, because the Premier League and the flashy money-soaked divisions will get video tech, whereas the lower leagues must struggle on without it because of the expense. It hardly seems fair to have a sport where refereeing accuracy is dependent on the size of your stadium or the sponsorship cheque of the division you play in, detractors argue.

Tosh. The best referees operate at the highest level. So should the best technology. With all due respect to the Isthmian league, and other such 'amateur' divisions, never will there be a goal decision which could be worth tens of millions of pounds down there. The same can't be said of Gomes' goal-line fumble at Stamford Bridge yesterday.

Sepp Blatter has given countless flimsy excuses as to why it hasn't been implemented. It's too expensive, none of the tech is accurate enough, it gives the fans something to talk about, and so on.


What it does do is give the fans something to harass the referee about. If every bloke screaming abuse at the ref after a decision went against them knew that the officals had watched indisputable TV pictures, then they'd have to shut up. Give referees more accuracy, and you give them more respect.

Accuracy is a big sticking point. Chip-in-ball systems may be better than people, but none of the systems which have been trialled have been 100% accurate, apparently. Well, 99% has got to be better than what we have now.

Even if chipping footballs is a non-starter, TV replays are surely a must. Personally, I don't see why we can't have a video official watching the TV feed on the sideline at every game. If they see an injustice unfolding, it would only take thirty seconds to check the replays and tell the ref. Sky/BBC/ITV pundits usually tell us if a goal should stand before play has resumed.

It wouldn't undermine the referee, either. It's not like the ref would run over to the video man every two minutes. It would just be a whisper in the ear if he's about to do something a bit silly.

Case in point: remember at the last world cup when Tevez scored an offside goal for Argentina which was accidentally replayed on the stadium's mega-screen? The referees gave the goal, then saw the replay but were powerless to do anything about it. It was ridiculous then, but what's even more ridiculous is that almost a year later, nothing has moved on.

Blatter promised to look at technology after Lampard's ghost goal. So where is it?

If FIFA truly care about football, they will get with the times and turn to technology. And it's not just FIFA, but the FA, the Premier League and UEFA which need to act.

In the immortal words of Ian Holloway, "The game is wrong. The people in charge of the game are wrong. I'm not naming names, I'm just telling them they're wrong. They are so wrong it is frightening".

How many more Gomes moments will it take? How many more ungiven goals? Who knows. But it's a question we simply must keep asking. It's time to kick inaccuracy out of football.