It is a well know fact, whether you like the game or not, that the Call Of Duty series is the king of console FPS gaming, many have tried to knock it off of it's pedestal, Homefront looked hopeful and yet still has not even touched the height of COD with it's finger tips, Crysis was so close to smashing Call Of Duty yet fell short once again. So the title of FPS king is left firmly on Call Of Duty's head, but as we well know it has had a turbulent recent history....
When Modern Warfare 2 came out it was brilliantly revived, yet the pretty exterior soon crumbled away to reveal a broken and half finished game, with glitches still present and bad game mechanics, one of the most anticipated games of all time was a massive failure, yet still managed to break records for sales, the game was so broken it was considered by many to be unplayable and they went back to previous titles for the time until the next release.
That next release was Call Of Duty:Black Ops, and like previous COD titles broke numerous records, yet on it's release many people were wary, not to get caught in the so called "Honey Moon Period" where you just play the game and experiment, before the over powered combinations become present, people are tired of Black Ops already, saying that even though there were many problems in MW2 it was not as stale as Black Ops is becoming. The trouble for developers is that with a larger fan base it has to try and please more and more people, and in recent years the Call Of Duty developers are having a hard time doing this.
So what does this mean? It means that many people are looking for different games to play, that are like the Call Of Duty series but not, and as the foundations of the Call Of Duty's pedestal are faltering, it looks as if Battlefield 3 is wielding the hammer to knock it off.
Dice, the developers of the Battlefield series have bade the very sneaky move of pushing the game to release 2 weeks before the next installment of Call Of Duty, and seeing as though the majority of their customers are teenagers, many without their own source of income can get their parent to buy them one but then say no to getting a second released two weeks later, this means that Battlefield has cornered the market a little.
So the combination of high quality, drip fed footage, and release date swindling has set Battlefield 3 up to be a very good competitor for Call OF Duty and the next in line to the throne Of FPS King.
-Fren
(Jesus i swear i never wrote that much :E)