Will Battlefield 6 ‘boot stomp’ Call of Duty?

Here's The Dring: Battlefield 6 has got off to a spectacular start, but the hardest challenge is still to come

Back in 2011, former EA CEO John Riccitiello was talking about the rivalry between Call of Duty and Battlefield.

He suggested Battlefield was the real gamers game, and that Call of Duty was just sitting on people’s coffee tables (back in the day when these things were all sold in boxes). And then he said something that would go on to epitomize the fierce rivalry between the two franchises: “All I want to do is to have them rot from the core.”

It was an absurd statement, and one that Activision boss Eric Hirshberg would call out during his Gamescom opening address later that same year. “Can you imagine the head of Dreamworks animation coming out with a new movie and going to the press and saying that he wants Toy Story to ‘rot from the core’.”

“This isn’t politics,” he continued. “In order for one to win, the other doesn’t have to lose.”

He had a point, but Activision was hardly one to talk. The very original Call of Duty (from 2003) had the internal codename of ‘MOH Killer’, MOH standing for Medal of Honor, the dominant World War II shooter of the day that was owned, operated and published by EA.

Regardless, the whole incident showed just how competitive it was back then. EA really wanted to beat Call of Duty. But it never quite managed it. Activision’s shooter series would have some low points, but it never lost its leadership in the war shooter category.

I was reminded of the whole ‘rot from the core’ incident when I saw the post from former Blizzard exec Mike Ybarra, who wrote on X: “Battlefield will boot stomp CoD this year. But the real win here is CoD won’t be lazy anymore, and we’ll all get better FPS games for it.”

Ybarra is, of course, right when it comes to competition. If we disregard the ‘lazy’ comment for a moment (is there a lazier criticism?), competition does encourage risk taking, it can force more investment and it can lead to increased innovation. Playing it safe is not safe when you have a competitor breathing down your neck. And the result of competition is not just good for consumers, but it can end up growing the category for all involved. There will be some added interest in the full reveal of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 at Gamescom next week thanks to the Battlefield 6 beta.

But is he right about Battlefield beating CoD? Is EA going to take the shooter crown? Well, the initial beta numbers were certainly spectacular. Battlefield 6 achieved a peak player count of over 520,000 players on Steam, smashing the highest figure achieved by Call of Duty (which managed around 490,000). Wishlist numbers and pre-order figures are through the roof, too.

It's one thing to convince people to leave their ‘home’ game for a bit, but it’s quite another to expect them to never go back

And for those of us who love a bit of history repeating. It’s worth noting that one of the masterminds behind the new Battlefield is Vince Zampella, the same man who produced that first Call of Duty which unseated Medal of Honor as the market leader back in 2003.

But this isn’t 2003. Or even 2011 for that matter. The industry for shooters has changed significantly. Battlefield 6 has two goals it must achieve. First, it has to convince people to play it. And judging by the online buzz and the initial beta numbers, it is on-course to achieve that one.

But the even harder goal is what comes next: keeping people long-term, and this is a far more complex challenge. Gamers are entrenched into their live service experiences. They may ‘visit’ other games, but they will typically come ‘home’ eventually. These ‘home’ games are the ones they’ve invested hundreds, even thousands, of hours in. These are the games they’ve spent money on down the years. These are the games that their friends and community are playing. It's one thing to convince people to leave that for a bit, but it’s quite another to expect them to never go back.

Ubisoft’s XDefiant is an example of this exact situation. The 2024 free-to-play game was also gunning for Call of Duty. It was also led by a former Call of Duty producer (Mark Rubin). And it also had some impressive initial success. Ampere data says the game brought in 7.58 million players during its launch month. By June, Ubisoft was celebrating reaching 11 million players overall.

But it faded away quickly. Just two months later, monthly players were down to 2.9 million (Ampere data), by the end of the year, it was attracting just 250,000 users. That had fallen to lower than 50,000 by the time it was closed down in June 2025.

EA has lofty goals for Battlefield. The investment in the franchise has clearly been significant. So, it’s not enough for it to just do well at launch. This is about building a long-term, live-service leader in the shooter category. Very few companies have the capability to challenge in this space. EA, with its network of studios and the Battlefield IP, is perhaps one of the few organisations that stands a chance of making an impact.

So “boot stomp” Call of Duty? It’s not impossible. It has a better chance than most. But the advantage is still very much with Activision.

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