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Activision CEO Wants Call Of Duty/Battlefield Trash-Talking Truce
At his Gamescom keynote speech, Activision publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg says that the trash-talking between his company and Electronic Arts over Call of Duty and Battlefield, respectively, is bad for the industry.
"Competition is of course a good thing. It keeps us all on our toes and ultimately makes the games better. It's healthy," said Hirshberg according to Eurogamer. "But it's one thing to want your game to succeed and another thing to actively, publicly say you want other games to fail." Activision and Electronic Arts – particularly Activision's Bobby Kotick and EA CEO John Riccitiello – have engaged in a public feud over which game will come out on top this holiday season.
"As someone who runs one of the biggest publishers in this business," he continued, "I can tell you that I want as many games as possible to succeed, whether we created them or not, because I want this industry to keep growing and bringing in new people."
Continuing on this theme, he explained how this kind of in-fighting not only makes the industry look bad, but in his opinion, is overall bad for business. "We all still have a lot to prove in our position in the pop cultural landscape. We still need to stand the test of time. We need to show we can withstand the kind of disruptive change and new competition that we're facing now. The only way to do that is to continue to make great games. 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."
For more on Hirshberg's comments, head over to the full story over at Eurogamer.
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