Robert Bowling talks Modern Warfare 3

At first it's a little shocking, because you want to know where it's coming from and all that, and is there more to come, but the big thing is we never want the game to be seen out of context.

The reason for that is that user feedback is extremely valuable in the development of our games, so when a user is giving uninformed feedback and they see something out of context or misinformed and then that leads to this conclusion and this conclusion, and then that leads to a question based on this conclusion, then they're giving us feedback and might be asking about something that's not even true, which if we're not realising that could cause us to go in a direction they don't want us to go.

So that's the biggest thing - I want to make sure our fans are informed and know what Modern Warfare is so they can give us informed feedback. So that was the biggest challenge with it - making sure we start the conversation about Modern Warfare 3 so we can have an honest conversation with our fans of what to expect so you can tell us what you want more of.

COD Elite isn't ours, so I wasn't in control of how it rolled out, but I was happy with our response once it rolled out - of being very boots-on-the-ground, answering individual questions, making sure we're clearing up any miscommunication.

To answer your question as a whole, I would have loved for it to be... It's such a vast and detailed service that could very easily be confused, so I wish that from the get-go there could have been more transparency on everything that there was to know, rather than just the high points or just the points that were based around the premium structure, considering that it's a free service first and foremost.

So I would never introduce a free service as a premium service. I would say, "Here's what everyone gets. Completely optional. If you want more, then we'll talk about that later, but most importantly this is what we're adding to the game for everyone."

Yeah, it doesn't really get to us. I'm very aware that we have two very different audiences and we're delivering two very good and very different experiences, so I think the baiting is built up more of these two really passionate communities - and they should be really passionate about their individual games - getting at each other, and that's been happening forever.

I think that would be a misconception. I think there is definitely room. If you are a shooter fan, you should be getting both, because they're both going to be excellent experiences. But more importantly they're going to be very different experiences. The kind of gameplay you get from Call of Duty is very different from what you get anywhere else and I think that's important. I think any shooter fan would be extremely disappointed if you only got one.

I am.

I felt Black Ops was great. What I love about where we are as a franchise right now is that we have teams that are taking their own twist on the franchise each year, and I think that's great because we are clearly going in two different directions and it's not as black and white as good and bad - it's two very distinct flavours of what Call of Duty can be that are both great in their own way.

I really like that because it allows us to stick to our core Modern Warfare philosophies but we can be inspired off each other, so we can look at things that they're doing and features they're doing and think, "How can we put the Modern Warfare twist on what they're doing?" and they can look at us and vice versa.

A clear example of that is how well they do Zombies, and that's something we will never do, but we have our Spec Ops mode that we started in MW2 and we've been building up on that and incorporating little things from their stuff, but then taking it in a whole new direction.