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There seems no end to this war of words between Activision and EA executives.

To catch you up to speed, here’s a chronological list of what happened so far:

June 16th: Speaking to industry gamers, EA CEO, John Riccitiello, Said that he wanted the Call of Duty franchise to “Rot from The Core”

August 17th: Activisoin Publishing CEO, Eric Hirshberg, Addressed that comment.

August 18th: EA hit back at Activtion stating that the Call of Duty series will die in 2-3 years because EA will be stealing 20%-30% market share a year.

August 19th: one the launched day of our site, we applauded Modern Warfare 3’s Robert Bowling comment after playing Battlefield 3.

Now, another chapter to this endless war. In an interview with GI.biz, Eric Hirshberg claims that “It’s not a new strategy for challenger brands to try to get themselves mentioned in the same breath as leader brands. Coke didn’t do the Coke challenge, Pepsi did the Pepsi challenge. It’s a tried and true strategy to try and get yourself mentioned as much as possible in the same breath as the leaders so people start thinking of you in that context.”

His Pepsi-Coke analogy makes sense to some extent, but Battlefield 1 came out in 2002 as opposed to the original Call of Duty, which came out in 2003. However, I think Eric is refering to Battlefield as a challenger in the world of consoles compared to Call of Duty dominance in that market.

He went on to touch on the EA’s claim to steal Activision’s market share by saying “Well not from us.” He explained further “What about creating market share? I feel like [EA’s comments] comes from a place that assumes that there’s a finite number of gamers in the world. If we as an industry act like there’s a finite number of gamers in the world, and just beat each other up to get access to them, I think that will come true. On the other hand, if we act like we can constantly pull people into this passion, which is what has happened – the industry has grown exponentially – then I think that we can bake a bigger pie instead of fighting over a bigger slice of the existing one.”

MP1st’s message to these two publishing giants, why don’t you put together your finest multiplayer teams and play 4 rounds (defenders and attackers) of Rush on Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Demolition on Call of Duty Black Ops. If the score is still level, end the tournament with a match of Inferno on Counter Strike Source, a middle ground if you will. All joking aside, we hope both EA and Activision hit their projected sales’ targets, market share and whatnot, but most importantly make sure that their games are well supported in terms of patches post release.

On a lighter note, Activision makes its new employees play Call of Duty MP.