A random pop-up on the screen of a Modern Warfare 2 player could be an indication that a paid subscription plan was in the works.
Let’s keep this one as a complete and total rumor for now, but a Modern Warfare 2 player may have stumbled upon evidence of a planned membership program for the game. While trying to join a friend’s match, a screen popped up that asked him to pay for a subscription.
The player videotaped it, so as we can see the text over the top of the pop-up says “Modern Warfare 2 Membersh…” which I think we can extend to “membership.” The text in the center of the screen says: “No memberships are available at this time. Please try again later.” It allowed the player to purchase Microsoft Points to acquire one of said memberships.
The video could be doctored, or a bug related to an Xbox Live Gold subscription plan, but could easily be real too. It’s no secret that Activision wants to attach a subscription service to the Call of Duty brand, with CEO Bobby Kotick even admitting he’d implement one in some form as soon as possible if he could.
The question is if the pop-up is from a subscription plan of days past, or of days future. The way Kotick talked about it previously indicates that subscriptions are off the table for now until a new title is released, so the former makes more sense meaning that if this screen is real it’s from leftover code and just happened to appear. Whether Activision wants to charge for extra multiplayer features of Modern Warfare or for a completely unique Call of Duty MMOG is unknown, but we’ll find out eventually because this issue isn’t going away anytime soon.
Source: 360 Junkies