EA CEO: Black Ops "was mid-80s"

In an interview with Industry Gamers (as reported by MCV ) EA CEO John Riccitiello has hit out at Activision's latest Call of Duty entry Black Ops, saying its definitely not 90% review material.

Despite being announce as hitting the Christmas number one spot in the UK multi-format sales chart today, Riccitiello questions the game's quality.

"[Treyarch] didn't make a 90-rated game; I think it's 86 now. I don't think review scores are the be-all, end-all, but we all know a mid-90 when we see it, but this was mid-80s."

He went on to question Treyarch's supposed supplanting of Infinity Ward as Activision's lead developer. "I don't know that having two guys that probably don't play the games, in the form of the CEO of Vivendi and the CEO of Activision, come out and say 'Treyarch is our lead developer,' like you could anoint that."

I think it's far from proven that the gaming consumer views a product from Treyarch in the same category as a product from what was Infinity Ward."

The claim may seem heavy-handed, but there's two underlining points to the comments. One, The core ex-Infinity Ward team now form the EA-backed Respawn Entertainment after leaving Activision post-Modern Warfare 2.

Secondly, EA released modern-day ear FPS Medal of Honor this year to a mixed critical response, to which EA acknowledged.

Riccitiello, however, sees it differently.

"It exceeded our expectations going in. We knew we were building a game on Unreal; we knew that it had limitations in terms of what it was going to do, but by and large if you listened to our last earnings call, we stated unequivocally that it exceeded expectations.

"Activision will do 25m on the tail of last year's Modern Warfare 2 and the start of this year's Black Ops, and then probably something similar next year. But it took them, what, five or six editions to get into double digit millions?"

It'd be interesting to see what Respawn manage to cook up as its first project for EA. No pressure guys - no pressure.