EA Hopes Call of Duty War Will Help Battlefield
When two quarrel, a third wins. This proverb may soon perfectly reflect the conflict between Sony and Microsoft. And the winner in this war may in fact be the Battlefield series.
Source: dice.se
Recent weeks have been a relentless series of reports about the conflict between Sony and Microsoft. Its origin was the desire of the American giant to buy Activision Blizzard, as announced at the beginning of the year. The record deal is being exceptionally resisted by the Japanese corporation, according to which the deal, and thus - the possible exclusivity of the Call of Duty series, could negatively affect the gaming industry.
Although all the fuss upsets primarily gamers, it seems that there is one man who would not mind if Microsoft one day decided to make the CoD its exclusive title. Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts, believes that the shooter's exclusivity for Xbox consoles could be a big opportunity for Battlefield, which is available on all gaming platforms (via Gamespot).
"In a world where there may be questions over the future of Call of Duty and what platforms that might be on or might not be on, being platform agnostic and completely cross-platform with Battlefield, I think is a tremendous opportunity," said Wilson in the interview with Goldman Sachs.
It's hard to disagree with this position of the head of Electronic Arts. However, after recent, rather weak years for the brand (especially due to the failed Battlefield 2042), the IP needs to see a series of changes that will once again attract the attention of shooter lovers.
"There's a lot of work that we've got to do there. But at its very core, this extraordinary IP. And what we've seen in the world of entertainment is great IP is resilient. And we've seen movies not live up to the expectations of franchises. Star Wars might be one such franchise. And then you can see what happens when you get the right creative team involved, how they can completely reinvent and grow a franchise. And I think we have an extraordinary creative team involved in Battlefield now," he added.
Will the iconic shooter actually benefit from the possible exclusivity of Call of Duty? Perhaps we will find out in a few years. Before that happens, EA and DICE will have to do a lot of work. However, it won't be that easy after the departure of Lars "Mr. Battlefield" Gustavsson from the Swedish - a veteran of the company, who was associated with the popular series for 22 years.
