Call of Duty: The MMO

Nazis FTW, etc. It's only been raised as the faintest of possibilities so far, but it's a fairly tantalising prospect. More so than a straight COD5, at any rate.

"When you think about other properties that we own and control like Call of Duty, and what would be the natural evolution of a property like Call of Duty into a massively multiplayer environment...how do you monetize that?"

I'd imagine Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, for those corp-o-words were his, is thinking more along the lines of a Battlefield Heroes model than a WoW one - profit from character persistence rather than asking a sub for an online world per se. A money-tinged embiggening of the ranking and unlock system already seen in COD4 seems pretty logical. Speaking of BF Heroes, it's possible such talk is as much part of the natural call, response and plagiarism cycles this industry so often moves in as it is the Blizzard merger flagging up the importance of massively multiplayer to Activision.

Still, we're all looking for the malnourished spectre of Planetside to be reborn into some new and beautiful online FPS world - perhaps a big, respected name like COD is our best hope.

So, World War II or Modern Combat? I can probably guess what you're going to say.