Despite Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s record breaking entertainment launch for the third consecutive year, rival EA managed to capture a slice of market share from the FPS king MW3.
That’s according to EA COO Peter Moore, in an interview with Industry Gamers, said that the company has carved itself a piece of Call of Duty’s pie this year.
“It’s early days and we’re only a month in – we feel very good about it,” he said. “Ten million sold in and five million sold through doesn’t come out of nowhere – if we haven’t gained share, that means in the first week we’ve added five million new FPS gamers.
“I think when the dust fully settles, maybe when we’re looking at this at the end of our fiscal year (March 31, 2012) we’ll do an analysis and I think we will have taken share. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, unless everything BF3 sells is just incremental.”
Moore added: “But I’m more focused on how we’ve done by our gamer and consumers, and yes many of them bought both games undoubtedly. Have our retail partners enjoyed this? Absolutely. And does this help push the game industry to the front pages of newspapers? You bet it does.
“Go look at USA Today, go look at The New York Times – the big entertainment blockbusters this year are not movies, they’re video games. Call of Duty and Battlefield have done that.”
“It’s less about being second place. This is about taking market share. If you look at last year, you might argue that Call of Duty took maybe 90 percent of the [FPS] market share. We think we can knock that down to 70 percent this year. We don’t have to outsell Call of Duty to have a very successful year. This is a long-term strategy to be a major player.”
The rivalry of the shooter giants, which mainly manifested in verbal back and forths initiated and kept alive by EA, also benefited “gamers and the industry,” Moore adds.
“Together we’ve grown the genre enormously. 10m sold in and 5m sold through doesn’t come out of nowhere – if we haven’t gained share, that means in the first week we’ve added 5 million new FPS gamers.” That, or a lot of people simply bought both shooters.
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Yesterday, Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand launched on Xbox 360, PC