That time of the year is already near when two heavyweights – Activision and DICE – gear up to release the next big additionss to their famed franchises, Call of Duty and Battlefield respectively. As expected, both the companies are trying to get the best of the market and outrun the other in the process, but the guys at DICE are looking to go past their Call of Duty counterparts, and won't stop until Battlefield is at the top.
Recently, executive vice president of EA Games Patrick Soderlund was in an interview with MCV, and stated that the studio won’t rest until it has gone past Call of Duty, as far as numbers are concerned.
“Competition is good. It brings the best out of people. If there was only Battlefield or only Call of Duty, then the development teams might have been a little bit more content. We don’t look at them necessarily and mimic what they do,” Soderlund stated. “But we think about them. Maybe they weren’t thinking about us much when we made Battlefield 3, but I can tell you, they are thinking about us now. They need too. We made a dent in the FPS market and we took share from them. And I am not going to give up until I’m No.1 and I am going to make sure I’m No.1.”
To make that dream a reality, the company is “spending a tonne of money” and that the team involved is working very hard to make great games year after year.
“I want to give our consumers the best I can. We will strive to be No.1. If I said: ‘No.5 is probably fine,’ it’s hard for people to rally behind that message. But I wouldn’t say we could be No.1 if I didn’t think we could. I think I have the right team, the right product and the right strategy to get there,” he concluded.
For those who are not aware, unlike the Call of Duty series, Battlefield is not an annual franchise, and according to Soderlund, the team has absolutely no compulsion to release a new Battlefield title each year. Moreover, EA has already stopped its other FPS franchise offering, Medal of Honor.
Battlefield 4 is scheduled to release for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC on Oct. 29 in North America and Nov. 1 in Europe, with versions for PS4 and Xbox One arriving in Q4 2013.
