14 DAY TRIAL // Analysts are yet unsure who will win the first person shooter crown this year but they believe that the fierce competition between Battlefield 3, from DICE and Electronic Arts, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, from Infinity Ward and Activision, is good for the health of the industry.
John Taylor, who is an analyst watching the video game industry at Arcadia Research, has told IGN That, “They will take all the air out of the room, except for Batman, Skyrim and maybe Assassin’s Creed Revelations. One retailer offered about 160 properties last year from October to December, but this year they are cutting that back to about 90. Retailers are showing real caution on all but the five ‘sure bets’.”
Ted Pollak, who is working for Jon Peddie Research, added, “Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 will help sales of Xbox 360s and PS3s. More importantly, and rarely covered by the press, Battlefield 3 is driving upwards of a billion dollars in PC builds and upgrades this year alone.”
The analyst also believes that since the original Crysis no other games have managed to generate as much interest in new hardware, which is also a good thing for PC component manufacturers and retailers.
Pollak believes that Battlefield 3 will be the best selling game this fall because of the feeling that Call of Duty is losing ground in terms of innovation and caters too much to the needs to console based gamers.
Michael Pachter, who is an analyst with Wedbush Morgan, believes that 80 percent of those who play Call of Duty do it for the multiplayer and that only a small section of them will abandon the franchise in order to try out something different with Battlefield.
The two games launch with a two week gap between them.