After months of media and hot discussion, Activision and Electronic Arts are ready to butt heads with their big games of the holiday season: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3. If you’re expecting both to be similar, don’t be, because they’re heading in two opposite directions.
Glen Schofield, General Manager of Activision, had some interesting things to say about the media battle between MW3 and BF3 when speaking to CVG. He apparently didn’t even hear about his competitor’s game until a few months ago, and said:
My competition is Modern Warfare 2. It always has been and if you think back two years ago when we were starting on the project I didn’t know anything about Battlefield. I started hearing stuff about it maybe five or six months ago, news coming out.
With how much attention Battlefield 3 has been given over the course of the year, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could miss it until only a few months ago. Nonetheless, Schofield continued:
…as far as a competitor goes, by the time we saw anything of it, the window to make changes was closed.
What’s most surprising about his quote is that he’s essentially stating that BF3 has had no impact on the direction of MW3. There’s no way around it, that’s a big and potentially costly mistake. BF3 has some qualities that make it an easy sell to people tired of Call of Duty‘s annual releases, and some adjustments could help remedy that. You can bet almost anything that DICE have looked at previous Call of Duty releases for ideas on how to make their respective game more attractive, and while the Battlefield series hasn’t had the same success, it does offer a lot of unique ideas that make it a serious competitor in the market. If you get around to playing MW3 this holiday season, and find that it’s redundant, then here’s the reason.
