Activision not moving into social and mobile until it can "do it with excellence"

Activision's Eric Hirshberg has said that Call of Duty: Elite will be using a lot elements found in social and mobile games.

At the same time though, Activision doesn't feel the need to rush into the social and mobile spaces with both feet until it can "do it with excellence."

"I think what Activision has done, very smartly, is we don’t want to rush into anything until we figure out what our unique contribution and what our unique competitive advantage can be," Hirshberg told Industry Gamers. "What we’re choosing to do is use social and mobile and the fact that people are playing games in different parts of the day on different devices than they have before as a way to strengthen our core business. That’s what we’re doing with Call of Duty: Elite.

"Call of Duty: Elite is essentially a social network in and of itself, as well as having a lot of the properties of a social game. It takes place on mobile devices, tablets, and smartphones. So Call of Duty: Elite is using a lot of those new tools in a very creative way to strengthen a core franchise of ours which is still going to take place on a console.

"I think that’s a very sophisticated and measured response to new technologies and new gaming categories...I think that’s something Activision has done smartly. We want to enter the new genres and the new territories smartly and with real innovation and real competitive advantages, not just, 'Hey! There’s an app store. Now let’s put all of our IP on the app store,' whether or not that’s a great experience, whether or not that’s detrimental to the brand and the core product. We haven’t done that.

"People can criticize us as being slow, but I think it’s admirable because we’re not moving until we’ve got a way to do it with excellence and a way that builds our business and makes the gaming experience better for our players."

Call of Duty Elite will launch with Modern Warfare 3 in November. The beta begins on July 14 and as of Tuesday, had attracted 2 million sign ups.