'Battlefield' throws down gauntlet before 'Warfare' lands

— -- "War," the song goes, "is not the answer."

All apologies to Marvin Gaye, but war is what's going on in video games right now. And perhaps the biggest war game showdown to date kicks off this week with Electronic Arts' release of first-person combat game Battlefield 3, available Tuesday.

EA, the No. 2 publisher in the U.S., has Activision's multibillion-dollar Call of Duty franchise in its sights. Deploying Battlefield 3 two weeks before the Nov. 8 arrival of the next Call of Duty installment, Modern Warfare 3, is part of EA's extensive campaign to gain inroads into the $5 billion first-person shooter game market.

At stake is leadership in one of the hottest genres for the $60 billion global video game industry. First-person shooters currently account for about 16% of all console video game sales, and that's expected to increase, says Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian. Action games such as the Batman and Uncharted titles make up 22%, followed by 16% for sports games such as Madden NFL and NBA 2K

More than two years ago, EA began putting into place a strategy to loosen Call of Duty's grip on gamers. The first salvo was last fall's Medal of Honor, a reboot of the franchise that only a decade ago itself was the top first-person shooter franchise. Medal sold five million copies but amounted to a mere flesh wound, as Activision's 2010 release Call of Duty: Black Ops rolled on to set a sales record of 25 million copies.

Battlefield 3 appears to have more firepower. An on-the-rise development studio, DICE (Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment), has gradually built a following with its Battlefield series of games. Armed with its new Frostbite 2 technology to create Battlefield 3's cinematically fluid graphics, buzz has been building about the game. EA says pre-orders for Battlefield 3 are seven times that of previous Battlefield games and approach 3 million.

Stockholm-based DICE, acquired by EA in 2006, "set out to conquer a titan, to make a better game than the best shooter in the history of our industry, and do it by a wide margin," EA CEO John Riccitiello said recently on Fox Business News. "We set out to do something great here, and I think we have."

Battlefield's assault on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 "is certainly more aggressive than we have seen in the past," says Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR) analyst Jesse Divnich. A recent trailer for the game, accompanied by the raucous Jay-Z track 99 Problems, carried a tagline of "Above and Beyond the Call."

And a future downloadable game map is called "Warfare." "EA is trying to position itself," he says, "so that when the next generation of consoles comes out, they can be there to innovate quicker and better than its competitors and, hopefully, overtake Call of Duty."

A fair fight or mismatch?

Even though Activision and EA are the top two U.S. game publishers, analysts don't think Battlefield 3 can contend with the next Call of Duty game.

For starters, Call of Duty is one of the top entertainment franchises of all time in terms of recurring revenue, Sebastian says. The last two Call of Duty games — 2010's Black Ops and 2009's Modern Warfare 2— have taken in $1.5 billion and $1.3 billion respectively at retail. That rivals the movie Titanic ($1.84 billion) and, combined, matches Avatar ($2.8 billion), Sebastian says.