Modern Warfare 3’s ‘Elite’ service priced, Xbox 360 bundle revealed

With the Call of Duty expo underway, news has started to rat-a-tat out like eager shells from the barrel of an info-gun.
First up, that infamous ‘Elite’ service. It’ll cost you $50 USD for a year of this (though if you buy the ‘Hardened’ edition of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 it includes one free year), giving you access to all the DLC released for the game across that year.
This is reported to be “more than 20”, but there’s no word on how many of these will be lazy gun retexture jobs. Some, however, will be new maps and missions for the ‘Spec Ops’ mode.
The service will also offer daily competitions and access to ‘Elite TV’, which will feature a couple of weekly shows produced by Arrested Development actors Will Arnett and Jason Bateman. ‘Friday Night Fights’ will feature matches between real-life groups of people (say … firemen vs police, or abortion rights activists vs popes), while ‘Noobtube’ will showcase ‘smack talk’ videos sent in by players.
Much as I love Bateman and Arnett, this sounds like the absolute nadir of their careers. And Bateman has been in some romantic comedies with Jennifer Aniston, so you know that’s bad.
In slightly less depressing news, a limited edition Xbox 360 bundle (pictured below) with a Modern Warfare 3 theme will be released in October. It comes with a, err, ‘battle worn’ console and two matching controllers, a 320GB hard drive and a copy of the game. That’ll cost you $400 USD.
If you literally live in a pit of money, I guess you could also buy the separate wireless headset with Modern Warfare 3-branded base for $70 USD.
So, to recap, it will be possible for you to spend $520 USD for the privilege of booting up your Modern Warfare 3 360 and listening to Arnett and Bateman cringe through some braindead ‘smack talk’ videos over a branded wireless headset.
If that doesn’t sound like a great night in at a bargain price, I don’t know what does.