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tinkertiler
29-09-2010, 10:52 AM
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick had a few things to say about the competition at Electronic Arts, to which the latter quickly responded with a few choice words of their own. Taking neither side in the verbal warfare, veteran game journalist of Gamasutra Chris Morris believes that the public squabble is not helping anything at all. In fact, it's embarrassing the industry.



"Every industry has competition ? and it?s not at all uncommon for big companies to actively dislike each other," Morris wrote. "But verbal attacks are rare. Instead, when one company wants to make the other look foolish, they?ll do it through pricing or by surprising the market with a vastly superior product."



"In the gaming world, though, companies like to hash things out in as public a forum as possible," he added.



Morris also points out that apart from having these attacks out in the open, the point of the two companies' current argument is also basically "petty", which he gives a three-point rundown of:

* Both companies have lost talented developers to the other. Guys, you?re the biggest publishers in town. You have the most money. If a team is leaving one, it?s not a bad bet that they?re going to the other.
* Both companies have had a taste as king of the hill ? and both loath the title of ?the industry?s second largest third-party publisher?
* Both know that the fight for that top spot is going to slog on for a long, long time, so any chance they get to point out a perceived weakness in the other is cause for glee in the executive suite.



At the end of the day, Morris believes that despite being entertaining, encounters such as this one are detrimental to people's perception of the video game industry. "(it) gives games and industry onlookers the chance to vilify one or both companies ? a favorite pastime of message boards the world over. Gamer allegiances change fast, though. The cloud this industry infighting casts over the entire world of video games, meanwhile, could stick around for quite a while."