Moore: "I don't think there's any doubt" that BF3 took share away from MW3

EA COO Peter Moore has said he believes Battlefield 3 succeeded in taking part of the market share away from Modern Warfare 3.

Speaking in an interview with IndustryGamers, Moore said that while it's still a bit early to tell, once the firm has a look at figures for its fiscal year, it will find that it did indeed steal some of the market share.

"I'm not sure that we didn't steal any share," he said. "It's early days and we're only a month in – we feel very good about it. Two entities have benefited from Call of Duty and Battlefield being on the market: gamers and the industry. Together we've grown the genre enormously. 10 million sold in and 5 million sold through doesn't come out of nowhere – if we haven't gained share, that means in the first week we've added 5 million new FPS gamers.

"I think when the dust fully settles, maybe when we're looking at this at the end of our fiscal year [on March 31] we'll do an analysis and I think we will have taken share. I don't think there's any doubt about that, unless everything BF3 sells is just incremental.

"I'm more focused on how we've done by our gamer and consumers, and yes many of them bought both games undoubtedly. Have our retail partners enjoyed this? Absolutely. And does this help push the game industry to the front pages of newspapers? You bet it does. Go look at USA Today, go look at The New York Times – the big entertainment blockbusters this year are not movies, they're video games. Call of Duty and Battlefield have done that."

IG notes that the interview was conducted before Black Friday sales were figured, and since then, EA has announced that Battlefield 3's sell through numbers have reached 8 million.

While newer figures for MW3 haven't been released, analysts predict it will hit 25 million sold.