14 DAY TRIAL // EA boss John Riccitiello, after talking about his company's greatest rival, Activision, and its prestigious Call of Duty franchise, has chimed in on the rivalry between two of the biggest console makers out there, Sony and Microsoft.
According to the EA chief executive officer, even if Microsoft went to great strides to promote the Xbox brand, on an international level, it still can't compete with Sony's PlayStation one.
"I think that Microsoft has done great work the last couple of years, and they've made a lot of smart moves: hitting pricing when they needed to, [...] and they've done a great job with Xbox Live," the exec told IndustryGamers.
"At the same time, the Xbox brand, the Microsoft brand, doesn't carry anywhere near as much sway as the Sony and PlayStation brand do outside the United States, and so I think the reality is the international marketplace is just so important and it's a natural advantage that no matter how good Microsoft is at growing their business, Sony has an almost-impossible-to-supersede head start."
But don't think that EA will put all its eggs into the Sony basket, as the executive revealed that his company had a "similar share" on both platforms, and that Sony does have a disadvantage in terms of development costs in front of Microsoft.
"The big disadvantage Sony carries is they have an expensive platform because of Blu-ray, so they have a harder time hitting price points," he said. "Microsoft has taken advantage of that and their online service, which really is the gold standard... I don't know that you'd point to either of them and say they can't shoot straight or that they've given it up."
Even if the Xbox 360 had a head start in front of the PlayStation 3, the consoles are now going head to head in terms of sales all around the world, and have both received new motion control systems in the form of the Kinect and the PlayStation Move, respectively.