Kotick bemused at existing Xbox Live business model

Activision president Bobby Kotick has told the FT he's not happy at current business models for online services like Xbox Live - that take a massive chunk of revenue from third-party content sales.

The boss used the success Modern Warfare 2 map packs have had on Xbox Live as an example, with Stimulus seeing over 2.5 million downloads in its first week.

"We’ve heard that 60 percent of [Microsoft’s] subscribers are principally on Live because of Call Of Duty," said Kotick. "We don’t really participate financially in that income stream. We would really like to be able to provide much more value to those millions of players playing on Live, but it’s not our network."

Kotick then added that new games consoles need to have a better chance of getting more revenue.

"We have always been platform agnostic," he said. "[Consoles] do a very good job of supporting the gamer. If we are going to broaden our audiences, we are going to need to have other devices."

Xbox Live has over 23 million subscribers. More than 1.7 billon hours of Call Of Duty were played online between November 2009 and April 2010, and Modern Warfare 2 has sold more than 20 million units.

Thanks, Edge.