Despite the colossal success of the Call of Duty franchise the last few years, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello believes Activision’s premier franchise is beatable, and he has a plan to do it that’s as simple as it is ambitious: First, make a better game. Then make another better game the following year.
Okay, so maybe it’s a plan that brings to mind the age-old wisdom of how to draw an owl, but Riccitiello is convinced this is a tactic that’ll work. “If I had to pick the story I’d like to play out next year, [it’s that] we ship a 90 [Metacritic score game] and [Activision] ships an 85,” Riccitiello said to Kotaku. “What I’ve witnessed a couple of times in the games industry is the way you unseat a market leader is you make a better game a couple of times in a row.”
Curiously, Riccitiello doesn’t single out Medal of Honor, EA’s Call of Duty rival this year, but rather seems to point to Battlefield 3 as being their hopeful CoD killer (note: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 pictured above). “I have great expectations to do a lot better in 2011 than in 2010 on the strength of a couple of products like Bulletstorm and Crysis [2], but most importantly for us, Battlefield 3, which I feel incredibly good about,” he said. “[Battlefield 3] is being built on the second generation of [the Frostbite engine], which I think is, at least in my opinion, a class act for FPS. I think we’re going to lift the game pretty dramatically in the first-person shooter category.”
