Yesterday marked the release of two new Modern Warfare 3 maps for Call of Duty Elite subscribers. It also kicked off a bold Activision initiative for this year that will see the publisher bringing out monthly MW3 content for those who bought a subscription or received one free year with their purchase of the game's 2011 Hardened Edition.

Activision bossman Eric Hirshberg promised at Call of Duty XP in September that Elite subscribers could expect more transparency surrounding Duty's DLC releases than they'd seen before, and a newly released content calendar speaks directly to those comments. Want to know how many maps, missions and modes you can expect between now and September, when the content season ends? Check out the official MW3 website or hit the jump for a quick rundown.

• January - Map, Map
• February - Map
• March - Map, Mission, Mission
• April - Map, Map
• May - Map, Mission
• June - Map, Mission, Mode
• July - Map, Map
• August - Map, Mission, Mode
• September - Map, Mission

The fine print at the bottom of the calendar notes that "content and release dates are subject to change," but what you see here is probably close to (if not exactly) what we'll end up with. Also remember that Call of Duty DLC is "first on Xbox Live," so the above timeline is probably a bit different on the PlayStation 3 side. 

Here's how the numbers shake out: 12 maps, six missions (presumably Spec Ops) and two modes. There's no indication of what "modes" might mean; a Community Playlist was added to MW3's multiplayer match options a few weeks back with the custom match type Drop Zone added to the ranks of the other XP-earning modes.

Hopefully the forthcoming DLC modes will be a little more elaborate than a tweaked private match gametype. Assuming they're even multiplayer modes at all, that is. Fans have been clamoring for a four-player option in Spec Ops Survival. Would it be too much to hope for something like that?

Source: CallofDuty.com