Barely a month goes by without EA boss John Ricitiello reminding anyone who will listen that he wants to snatch the FPS crown back from Call of Duty publisher Activision.

However, it seems a third challenger wants to enter the ring and take a shot at the title: Homefront publisher THQ.

"Yes. Absolutely," THQ VP Danny Bilson insisted when Eurogamer asked him whether he was interested in jumping into the Riccitiello/Kotick face-off.

"When we started Homefront, I said 'guys, if you want to build a first person shooter that deals with modern combat you're competing with Call of Duty.' The mission is - we just want to be in the conversation. With Battlefield, with Call of Duty, with Medal of Honor. And I like to think we're in the conversation.

"Can we beat them? Those are insane numbers for fantastic games, over many years. This is a franchise launch but so far so good. I think we have a really good game. And I think in particular in the multiplayer battlefield is as much fun as anybody's."

As revealed yesterday, it looks like the post-apocalyptic shooter has got off to a strong start. Bilson claimed pre-orders have topped 200,000 in the US alone  a record for a THQ title.

"That's as of now, and we're looking to do better to do than that. That's just GameStop in North America. That's not Europe. Europe pre-orders are different per country depending on the program they have.

"They're not Call of Duty numbers," he conceded. "But we're also a more nimble company, so a moderate hit will mean a lot to us. And a blockbuster hit would be ridiculously huge for us. All we can do is make the best game we can, sell it as well as we can and hope for the best."

Find out how well that gameplan works out when the title launches on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on 18th March.