Wednesday, April 13, 2011

EA (ERTS) Ups Ante in (ATVI) Battle

The battle royal between Electronic Arts (Nasdaq:ERTS) and Activision Blizzard (Nasdaq:ATVI) has been raised a notch as EA has launched a $100 million marketing campaign in hopes of making a dent in Activision's Black Ops behemoth.

After seeing its Medal of Honor game fail last fall, executives are setting their hopes on Battlefield 3 to take down Activision's Call of Duty franchise. And the stakes have gotten even larger after Black Ops generated $360 million of sales in its first 24 hours on the market.

Electronic Arts is striking back with a $100 million ad campaign that has the appearance of desperation written all over it. And Activision is playing defense by keeping Call of Duty users entertained with new content packs until its next release is out

EA has an uphill battle in trying to overcome the fastest-selling video game of all time. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 sold 2.3 million units in March 2010, but that doesn't come even close to Call of Duty.

Electronic Arts closed Tuesday at $19.74, falling $0.11, or 0.55 percent. Activision closed at $11.02, down $0.11, or 0.99 percent.

No comments: