According to a report by Develop-Online, Activision-Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick stated in an interview with CNBC, that he was somewhat sceptical regarding the console version of the upcoming Battlefield 3. According to him, “if it’s just a PC title, as it looks like today, that’s just a small audience to participate.”
Kotick went on to say that the publisher is always interested in what its competitors are doing, but seeing as the game has only been shown on PC so far, he does not believe the game to be an immediate threat to the Call of Duty franchise, which is more focused on console gamers. According to him, it is still unclear how impressive the game will look on consoles, where the technology is generally more limited.
The statement by Kotick is most likely a direct response to earlier statements made by EA CEO John Riccitiello, who earlier stated that he expects Battlefield 3 to outsell Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
That’s a silly comment to make, we know that BF3 is going to come to consoles, heck I think Riccitiello already stated that some of the footage in the montage trailer they released during E3 is console footage. And the Need For Speed the Run was running on PS3, it’s built with the same engine BF3 is built on and that looked really good (graphically).
I don’t understand why he’s trying to get such a hollow win on the graphics side, there’s no competition. Everyone will agree that the graphics of BF3 looks better than MW3. Instead he should try to focus on winning battles that are still undetermined, like gameplay and functionality.
I think he is trying to go on the marketing front, cause the CoD brand is a house hold name, where as Battlefield is not as prevalent.
At this point an EA rep needs to come out and say that MW3 is running on a four year old engine and it shows (they have eluded to this, as well as stating that they strive to innovate, where as Activision just wants cash). EA just needs to push the Battlefield brand more, and say that they are innovating in the FPS genre, and then more people will give the game attention.
ya and then Kotick would come back and be like ‘at least we aren’t exclusivizing balance altering content’ and the EA person would be like ‘ya well we aren’t charging for our best online experience’ and then they’d fling poo at each other and go home.
Of course he is going to make that statement. He should be better informed if he is going to make those statements, cause they are putting the game on three consoles. Yes the focus is on PC, but that is where the game started on (also where CoD started on as well).
Shunning the PC isn’t a good thing, cause that will just make PC players jump ship on your game and get a competitive game (yes it isn’t as many players, but it is still a significant revenue source). Kotick likes to make these wild assumptions, which doesn’t put him in the best light with gamers.
Glad you fixed that ‘k’. It was bugging me big time.