It’s really funny how things turned out for DICE and Infinity Ward/Sledgehammer. Both companies are talented and have been with us for quite some time. It wasn’t untill recently though when gamers found out the first studio, mainly due to its console version of Battlefield called, Bad Company. In fact… the same can be said about Infinity Ward too since their roots can be found on the PC with the creation of the first Call of Duty game. The only difference is that they moved to consoles way before DICE did.
So, both companies started out as PC developers, moved on to console gaming and are now well known to pretty much everyone. However, the Call of Duty series has always been more profitable but that is about to change, at least if today’s reaction from their fans and gamers is anything to go by.
It’s no secret that Infinity Ward was preparing a big announcement today for MW3’s multiplayer mode. And today, a new video was released that was a bit… well underwhelming and dated. I dare to say that this is mainly due to the fact that gamers have already seen Battlefield 3’s mayhem with all those vehicles in its huge maps. And although we value gameplay more than graphics, graphics did play a huge part in that wow reaction we got from the GC trailer of Battlefield 3.
Now don’t get us wrong, Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer looks like fun and although it’s similar to MW2, it does look ok. After all, the same can be said about BF3 and BF2. However, BF3’s marketing and hype process was way better this time. Electronic Arts caught Activision off guard and this might affect both games’ sales. It was also pretty clever to use and demonstrate the PC version first as they earned their trust, something that Crytek should have done with Crysis 2. Yes, Crytek tried to fix things post-launch but the damage has already been done.
So after today’s underwhelming MW3’s trailer, all it took DICE and Electronic Arts was a simple trailer about their upcoming Physical Warfare Pack. This pack was already available for pre-order so it’s clear that EA wanted to steal Modern Warfare 3’s thunder. And they actually did, since now most gamers are talking about Battlefield 3 yet again.
This is clever marketing guys. Instead of letting your competitor get away with a ‘bad’ trailer and reduce the word-of-mouth advertisement, you smash the competition by offering a new trailer that wow’s everyone mainly with its graphics. At the same time, you release periodically some high-resolution screenshots to let everyone drool all over them and voila. Everyone forgets your competitor’s game and tides turn around yet again.
We should also note that this Physical Warfare Pack will be made available for free to everyone at a later date, so there is no reason to worry if you can’t afford it.
Since we posted MW3’s trailer, here is also the trailer for the Physical Warfare Pack of Battlefield 3.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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