There have been two war-based first-person shooters that have gone head-to-head for as long as I can remember. Battlefield and Call of Duty have been rivals in this genre, pushing one another to get better and always seeking to regain the top spot. But this might be coming to an end though because Sony claims that Battlefield can’t keep up with its foe anymore, and the competitor sales show the disparity between the two.
There was a period where the Battlefield series put up quite the fight, and at one point, it even reigned supreme. Between 2010 and 2011, EA release Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3 which are two of the best games in the series, and it took over from 2009’s Modern Warfare 2 as the best FPS on the market. In the years that followed, there were some truly forgettable Battlefield games that tried to make a mark, before Battlefield 1 came out in 2016 and flipped the genre on its head with an epic campaign, fantastic graphics, and a truly engaging and relentless multiplayer mode. But even with all this critical success, it is the financial issues that speak truer.
Earlier today, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority published Sony’s arguments about the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. Microsoft argued that Battlefield would easily compete with Call of Duty, whereas Sony disagrees with this and claims that its game just couldn’t run with Activision’s thoroughbred series. It is the figures that back up Sony’s claim: Call of Duty has sold over 400 million copies in total, and Battlefield has only managed to sell 89.7 million, which is a considering difference.
A spokesperson from Sony claims that “Call of Duty is too entrenched for any rival, no matter how well-equipped, to catch up. It has been the top-selling game for almost every year in the last decade and, in the first-person genre, it is overwhelmingly the top-selling game.” It’s a shame really because it’s only the name that sells – if you’ve played any of the Call of Duty games in the past few years, then you will know how underwhelming they have been.
What does the hold for the future of the Battlefield series? You’d hate for them to completely admit defeat and call it a day, and that probably won’t happen because there is still a lot of money to be made. Plus, there are people out there who prefer the series compared to Call of Duty, and those fans might just implode if anything drastic happened.
