Modern combat game Battlefield 3, due to come out in November was designed to bring down Activision’s Call of Duty games, said EA chief executive John Riccitiello at the Ad Age Digital Conference in New York on Wednesday.
Battlefield 3 will launch this coming November, and according to Riccitiello, EA designed the game to take down COD, the current number one game in the industry, which did $400 million in sales revenue the first day of its release.
He added that EA and Activision would probably spend over a $100 million in advertising to acquire $1 billion a year in revenues of the lucrative market of the popular genre, comparing the feud between the two franchises to the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry, according to VentureBeat.
Riccitiello also talked about the development of the game industry in general, saying that there were 1.5 billion players worldwide over the past years which will probably rise to 3 billion over the next couple of years. He said that video gaming had the particularity of having a very captive audience compared to those using the internet and TV.
Riccitiello went on to explain that when people play video games, they typically focus on it intently, not doing anything else as opposed to when people watch TV or surf the web, they are usually doing multiple things at once.
He also underlined the importance of the video game market in terms of advertising, saying that Barack Obama purchased ads in many EA games to reach out to the youth vote, “I guess it worked,” he joked, according to Gamasutra.
Although there is no exact release date for Battlefield 3 which will be developed by Sweden-based DICE, a November 2 date has been circulating according to the EA downloader. Activision has yet to announce details of an upcoming Call of Duty video Game, but usually releases its titles in mid-November.
Battlefield 3 is available for pre-order for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. Pre-order now and get the pre-order bonus of the Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand expansion pack for free.
Learn more about the number one video game franchise: Call of Duty in the Call of Duty Store.
