User blog:Smuff/EA's public attitude towards Call of Duty is bad for the industry, says Hirshberg

"Competition is of course a good thing. It keeps us all on our toes and ultimately makes the games better. It's healthy. But it's one thing to want your game to succeed and another thing to actively, publicly say you want other games to fail"

- Eric Hirshberg at his keynote

Speaking at his GamesCom keynote address, Activision Publishing boss Eric Hirshberg has said that publishers should ultimately be supportive of one another's games and that general success grows the market for everyone.

EA CEO was quoted saying he wants the Call of Duty series to ' rot from the core '.

Activision's attitude can be seen in interviews with Robert Bowling, community manager of Infinity Ward, who has said many times that people should buy both Activision's Modern Warfare 3 and Electronic Art's Battlefield 3. Part of EA and DICE's marketing, however, includes slamming the Call of Duty series, going as far as having EA CEO John Riccitiello say he wants the Call of Duty series to ' rot from the core ', and describing the series as a ' Disneyland abstraction of a war game. '

"This isn't politics. In order for one to win, the other doesn't have to lose. This is an entertainment industry, it's an innovation industry and, at best, it's an art form. But we're still a young art form. If we were the movie industry the movies wouldn't even be talking yet. We shouldn't be tearing each other apart fighting for a bigger piece of the pie – we should all be focused on trying to grow a bigger pie. If we as an industry act like there's a finite number of games in the world, then there will be."

- Eric Hirshberg

Despite EA's marketing campaign, Modern Warfare 3 remains ahead of Battlefield 3 in the pre-order sales, with most people getting Battlefield 3 still getting Modern Warfare 3.

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