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Activision and EA trade barbs over corporate cultures
Activision's Bobby Kotick and EA's Jeff Brown engaged in a little Battlefield of Duty: Corporate Warfare 2 match this week, lobbing sound bites back and forth at each other. Kotick was first, boasting in the latest issue of Edge (via Next-Gen.biz) that his company allows its studios to maintain their independent cultures; citing Treyarch, the embattled Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games as examples. Kotick suggested that EA doesn't offer this luxury, and that's why Activision has successfully hired developers from its competitor's ranks. "We have no shortage of opportunity to recruit out of EA," he said. "That's their biggest challenge: Its stock options have no value. It's lost its way." Of course, Brown, EA's corp comm VP, was quick to respond: "[Kotick's] company is based on three game franchises -- one is a fantastic persistent world he had nothing to do with; one is in steep decline; and the third is in the process of being destroyed by Kotick's own hubris." Though Brown didn't clarify which franchises he was referring to, we'll throw out three names for you -- and you can play the matching game! Here goes: Guitar Hero, Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. The two suits probably had more to say to each other, but at that point the other players muted them both, and a few seconds later the actual match started up.
