Former Activision Blizzard president Mike Ybarra posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he thinks Battlefield 6 will “boot stomp” Call of Duty this year, and that this will push the CoD series to stop being “lazy”.
The full post reads: “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.” He elaborated on his thoughts in a response to another X user, writing:
“CoD has gone downhill for years since then. It’s a mess. Cheating, heavy UI/install, rainbow colors. People are sick of it. Luckily BF will force them to change it.”
Ybarra even touched on the recent spree of layoffs at Microsoft, the company that owns Activision Blizzard and as such the developers behind the Call of Duty series. Ybarra stated: “CoD will get better because BF will be great. You’re blind if you don’t see that. Bitter? No, glad I’m not part of the end of Xbox. Upset they can’t lead teams to make good games? Yes. Because they layoff all those people for leaderships mishaps.”
Since his departure from Activision Blizzard ahead of the Microsoft acquisition, Ybarra has since become CEO of Prizepicks. This sports betting company is notable through a gaming lens as an early adopter of esports betting, which it started embracing back in 2019.
It certainly seems like Ybarra’s chips are on Battlefield this year. Call of Duty is still no slouch in terms of sales, though positive sentiment has certainly taken a dip in recent years with complaints piling up (such as a distaste for certain cosmetics).