EA: ‘Battlefield 3 designed to take Call of Duty down’

Call of Duty games have been hogging top spot in the lucrative first-person shooter genre for years now. Call of Duty: Black Ops took $400 million in revenue on day one. Pretty soon after that, it passed $1 billion. Big numbers. Hence why EA – rival to Call of Duty publisher Activision – really, really wants to beat Call of Duty.

The game that’s going to beat it? Battlefield 3.

Speaking at the AdAge Conference in New York, EA boss John Riccitiello talked up this upcoming battle even more. He started the prick-waving by asserting the combined marketing cost for both publishers will be around $200 million. Then he came out with a fairly direct admission that Battlefield 3 serves only one purpose:

“[Battlefield 3] is designed to take [Call of Duty] down. If you’re looking for a battle of the titans – Red Sox vs Yankees… Microsoft or Google – and what the tip-off point is for this holiday season, this is it.”

Strong words, but will Riccitiello and Battlefield 3 be eating dust later this year? My hunch is yes, probably, if only because the Call of Duty brand is so phenomenally strong.

Battlefield 3 looks like the bee’s knees (see here), but as the previous Battlefield game has LIFETIME sales of 6 million compared to Black Ops‘s DAY ONE sales of 7 million, EA has set itself one hell of a task.

[AdvertisingAge, via Eurogamer]