EA and DICE are finally due to release the next installment in the Battlefield saga by the end of this year- and once again, they will be going up against Activision and their Call of Duty series. EA and Activison have sparred for supremacy over the shooter market before- and while Call of Duty always comes out on the side, EA has doubtless managed to make life difficult for Activision.
Industry analyst Michael Pachter believes that may happen this time, too- in an exclusive interview with GamingBolt, Pachter noted that Battlefield 5, which is expected to launch by this year’s end, may well be a threat to this year’s Call of Duty game.
“Of course it will be [a threat],” Pachter said. “I just think that there’s less overall competition. Battlefield 5 itself will be great- it’s just that last year there were five games that took 60 million units of sales- Halo, Fallout, Battlefront, Assassin’s Creed, and Call of Duty. This year, on the other hand, there are only four games, and one of them, Mafia 3, isn’t as big as the smallest of those others. So if Mafia offsets Assassin’s Creed, and Battlefield does Battlefront… then Watch Dogs is competing for Fallout’s share, and what happens to Halo’s share? It needs to go somewhere, so it should be good for everybody.”
Of course, this projected landscape for the holiday season may well change with E3 coming up- it is entirely possible that more games are announced which will be competing for the same share of the pie. That, plus the rumored launches of the NX and PlayStation 4K, as well as the confirmed launch of the PlayStation VR, will doubtless all be competing for the same dollars as well.