EA reveals strategy to beat COD

EA has revealed its out-there strategy to take the FPS crown away from Activision and its Call of Duty series: make a superior game.

EA boss John Riccitiello told Kotaku, "If I had to pick the story I'd like to play out next year it's we ship a 90 [Metacritic score] and they ship an 85.

"What I've witnessed a couple of times in the games industry is the way you unseat a market leader is you make a better game a couple of times in a row."

"I have great expectations to do a lot better in 2011 than in 2010 on the strength of a couple of products like Bulletstorm and Crysis [2], but most importantly for us, Battlefield 3, which I feel incredibly good about."

Nobody would suggest EA has had a bad year with its shooter offerings, per se – Medal of Honor grabbed an 8/10 and the excellent Battlefield: Bad Company 2 won a 9/10, with both seeing strong sales.

However, it all pales in comparison to Activision's Call of Duty juggernaut. The latest entry in the series – Treyarch's Black Ops – sold a staggering 5.6 million copies in just one day.

Riccitiello went on to reveal that the new Battlefield title is being built on the second generation of the Frostbite engine – tech that he believes "is a class act for FPS".

"I think we're going to lift the game pretty dramatically in the first-person shooter category," he claimed.