Activision’s CEO Eric Hirshberg has let loose a quote that’s making the rounds as a form of damage control against the growing backlash for this year’s Call of Duty from Infinity Ward, called Infinite Warfare.
Running to IGN for a bit of corporate white-knighting, Hirshberg found no love in IGN’s comment section when he stated…
“First of all, you gotta love the passion of gamers,” […] “This is an industry like no other and a fan base like no other. We love that our fans treat this franchise like their own and have such strong points of view about it.”
“There just aren’t many entertainment franchises on earth that can generate the kind of passion that Call of Duty can… and that’s a good thing.”
“Generate passion” is a euphemism for “outright hatred”. That’s neither embellishment or hyperbole. Following DICE and EA revealing the trailer for Battlefield 1, the dislike meter for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare skyrocketed, as gamers showed that they most certainly prefer one game over the other.
Nevertheless, Hirshberg didn’t let the facts or numbers get in the way of said damage control, telling IGN…
“[…] of course, we know there are people in our community who are nostalgic for the boots on the ground-style gameplay; that’s why we made Modern Warfare Remastered. But we also have millions of people in our community who want to have new innovative experiences in the game each year and Infinite Warfare is going to deliver that.
“The good news is this year we found a way to deliver both in one package while keeping our community together. While of course we see the passionate opinions on line, we also look at other measurements and the fact is — while it’s very early — pre-orders are off to a very strong start. Views of the reveal trailer… are up and, in fact, the number of likes per view on the Infinite Warfare trailer are the highest we’ve ever seen.”
I think he’s misinterpreting “dislikes” with “likes” because there’s no way in the world to blatantly say that the likes if the highest they’ve ever seen when they’re looking at 725,000 dislikes on a 10 million view trailer. That’s some Ghostbusters level hate right there.
The Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare trailer has been up for five days where-as the Battlefield 1 trailer has only been up for one day, as of the writing of this article. It’s amazing to see that both trailers are nearly equal in views (and the Battlefield 1 trailer is likely to overtake the Infinite Warfare trailer in views before the weekend is out) and yet Activision is still sitting in the burning house pretending as if nothing is wrong.
EA may have been the Worst Company in America two times in a row for a number of good reasons, but this year they just might pull out the one feat that they haven’t been able to do since Call of Duty: Modern Warfare came out, and that’s out-sell Call of Duty on the first week with a brand new Battlefield game.
The bean counters are really going to have their work cut out for them for what’s bound to be one of the biggest and most entertaining software rivalries to butt heads in years.
Battlefield 1 will get the drop first on October 21st for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC, while Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and the HD remastered version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will launch on November 4th for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. Let the clash of the titans begin.
