Call of Duty ELITE

Call of Duty ELITE is a service created by Beachhead Studios that was fully released in November 2011 to coincide with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. It is planned to be shutdown as of February 28, 2014. Players could either join for free or pay a yearly subscription and got additional features. The premium subscription's price is $50, £34.99 or €49.99 (or 4000 Microsoft Points) per year. A year's subscription is included in the Hardened Edition of Modern Warfare 3. The public beta was released on July 14, 2011 on the Xbox 360 exclusively for Black Ops. Invites for the PS3 version began being sent out on September 19, 2011. To get into the beta, users would sign up at the Call of Duty: Elite website, after which they would be emailed telling them that they had been accepted. The beta ended on October 18, 2011.

Access to Elite formerly required an account with an age of over 18 years old. This was not stressed on during the previews, so many players who purchased the Hardened Edition of the game could not use their subscription or Founder features because of their age. Activision stated that because of the large number of complaints, they worked on creating features for minors. A new update for Elite allows minors to use Elite, but restricts some features, such as physical prize contests. All other features, including Founder features and DLCs will be available to all ages.

Call of Duty Elite will be featured on PC, in Call of Duty: Ghosts.

It was announced by Activision that ELITE would be permantly shut down on February 28, 2014 in favor for the current Call of Duty app for Call of Duty Ghosts.

Free Features

 * Theater Mode
 * Upload 30-second videos to YouTube
 * Videos tagged with all players
 * Streaming and sharing
 * Career Stats
 * Heat Maps
 * Change and update loadouts from anywhere
 * 8 Vault slots to save Theater mode clip, Custom game modes, etc.
 * Facebook Friend Import
 * Weapon Performance Stats
 * Cross Device Messaging
 * Studying Other Players Profiles
 * Customized by interests + affinities
 * Identify group members in-game
 * Group Leaderboards + Message boards
 * Creating and joining free groups
 * Console, phone, and tablet apps

Subscription Features

 * Monthly DLC (also planned to be sold as grouped packages for non-subscribers)
 * Video series with Will Arnett and Jason Bateman
 * Video series with Ridley and Tony Scott
 * Participating in events and winning prizes
 * Levelling up the user's clan
 * 24 Vault slots
 * Strategy pages on weapons, etc. written by experts
 * All exclusive clan title cards and emblems
 * Premium group access

Founder Features
Founders are members that either buy the MW3 Hardened edition or activate a membership by December 2011. The cutoff date was originally November 13, but the date was been changed to December 13, due to server errors for the first few weeks after launch. Founders get 30 extra days of Elite for free because of this. Founder status is denoted by a green skull. Founder features became available on November 13, 2011. Founder features include:
 * Unique weapon camouflage
 * Unique Call of Duty ELITE profile skin
 * Special player card and emblem
 * Access to # Founder group
 * Clan XP Boost (single use only)
 * Exclusive prizes and competitions

Career
The career section of Elite allows the user to review their Call of Duty multiplayer experience. Career summary gives users a brief summary of the user's XP, Kill/Death Ratio, win percentage, and COD Point Earnings. Also, it says the user's level, how long it will take the user to get to their next prestige, and hours played. Recent Matches gives a very detailed summary of the user's latest matches. This shows their best performing weapons, score per minute, leaderboards, and so on. Custom Classes shows all of the user's custom classes. Personal Bests including their best KD Ratio, number of headshots, score, kills, and kill streak. Leaderboard tracker includes their global ranking for each game mode. Weapon Performance tells what weapons the user has the most kills, deaths, headshots, and so on. with. Finally, Theater provides all videos and pictures the user have in their fileshare. On top of all of this, the user can look up other players to compare their Career stats.

Connect
The connect section allows the user to create and join community groups. Groups are several people who share one similar interest (Such as Chuck Norris, for example) that play Call of Duty. This lets people meet new friends that share each other's interests. To join a group, the user simply has to add that group's group tag (i.e. #CoDFans). The user is allowed to be a part of 20 groups at once. Popular groups will be showcased in Featured Groups. The user can also create and join clans. Unlike groups, the user must be invited by the clan leader to join the clan.

Compete
The compete section allows the user to join new events or Lone Wolf Operations. These events allow users to play with developers, or by themselves, for prizes daily. While events are played with others, Lone Wolf Operations require the user to do certain challenges alone.

Improve
The improve section allows the user to get better at multiplayer. It gives an in-depth description of all weapons, equipment, perks, game modes, grenades, killstreaks, attachments, and maps, including their stats. It tells how to use, or play on, them well to improve the players' online experience.

Elite TV
Elite TV is the section where the user can watch videos of Theater Mode and ELITE subscription video series, weapon guides, and map tactics. In the Theater section, the user can see their uploaded videos, Staff Picks, Most Viewed and the Most Recent videos uploaded to ELITE via Theater Mode. There is a search option so users can find their friends' videos and search videos based on their titles. Users can comment on videos, share them and "like" them. For premium users, there is an additional section for videos made by staff which contain both live action and gameplay content.

Mobile Application
ELITE has its own mobile application on iOS and Android systems. It functions closely to its website counterpart, but only features the Career section.

DLC

 * January 2012 - Content Pack 1
 * February 2012 - Content Pack 2
 * March 2012 - Content Pack 3
 * April 2012 - Content Pack 4
 * May 2012 - Content Pack 5
 * June 2012 - Content Pack 6
 * July 2012 - Content Pack 7
 * August 2012 - Content Pack 8
 * September 2012 - Content Pack 9

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

 * Leaderboard stat tracking through CoD ELITE has been confirmed for Zombies.
 * ELITE is free for players in Black Ops II.