EA's Gibeau on regaining shooter crown: "We're going to compete"

Make no bones about it: EA wants its shooter crown back from Activision's grasp. EA CEO John Riccitiello has said it in the past, and EA Games boss Frank Gibeau has reiterated it following last night's Battlefield 3 showing at GDC.

Gibeau told IndustryGamers that as far as getting back number one in the shooter market, EA was "going to compete."

"We're super proud of the game. The Frostbite 2 technology is reinventing the category, and the Battlefield brand has its own persona and positioning, the multiplayer and squads," Gibeau said, referring to BF3, which will be almost certainly be the crown jewel in EA's calendar 2011 line-up.

"The combination of the brand and the technology and the quality of the DICE game is what we wanted to show tonight. We wanted to show unadulterated gameplay and show it for a long time, in February, and because we don't ship until the Fall it means we have a long time to polish it and make it extremely high quality," he continued.

"We're going to own what we do because we're going to leapfrog the category by introducing a whole new set of technology that's brand-new. The Frostbite 2 technology is going to help us do things in games and shooters that haven't been done before and will be tough for [the competition] to match."

Last year, EA's main shooter pick for second-half 2011 was Medal of Honor, which faired with mixed reviews, but did sell 5 million units since launch back in October.

Gibeau says that, despite the mixed results from MoH last year, it remains committed to the brand and its recently-confirmed sequel.

"We're really proud of what we did with Medal of Honor. It was commercially extremely successful. We know we can do better with the quality of the game, but we're very proud of what we did," said Gibeau.

"Medal of Honor is a great brand, it's nice to have it back, and now we can take it to new places. Medal of Honor is not going away and will be part of our shooter strategy going forward."

EA showed off Battlefield 3 at a GDC press event last night. Get Steph's impressions of the game through here.