EA: Better games is key to toppling CoD

In order to outsell Activision’s annual releases in the Call of Duty franchise EA must regularly release better games, CEO John Riccitiello has said.

You have to “Make a better game. And make a better game again,” he told Kotaku.

“If I had to pick the story I’d like to play out next year is we ship a 90 and they ship an 85,” he said “[Activision has] an awful lot of momentum without heir brand, no doubt. What I’ve witnessed a couple of times in the games industry is the way you unseat a market leader is you make a better game a couple of times in a row.”

He added that “over time, we can take the lead”.

Via MCV

Unless EA comes out with an FPS which suddenly sells three times the units of some of its biggest hits – Bad Company 2 sold six million units – this isn’t going to be an overnight change, but Riccitiello is confident that 2011 will be a great year for EA in the FPS space.

“I have great expectations to do a lot better in 2011 than in 2010 on the strength of a couple of products like Bulletstorm and Crysis [2], but most importantly for us, Battlefield 3, which I feel incredibly good about,” he said.

We’d certainly expect Battlefield 3 to challenge and most likely eclipse the sales of Bad Company 2. Bulletstorm is a new IP, but strong reviews could help it past a million sales, while we expect Crysis 2 to match the performance of this year’s Medal of Honor.