While many critics wonder who will come out on top of this year’s FPS battle, Daniel Suarez, VP of Production at Treyarch, insists that Black Ops 2 is not in competition with Halo. “We see Call of Duty as a military first-person shooter action adventure ride that we want people to experience for an entire year or more,” Suarez said. “But a sci-fi shooter like Halo, absolutely, we want people to engage with as many types of games as possible.”
Halo is of course a series which is developed for Xbox, being a Microsoft project. Call of Duty has long had a strong relationship with Xbox, and many of the series’ fans are Xbox gamers. As such it’s not surprising that Treyarch would urge gamers to consider buying both games, despite the fact that they are going to be coming out in the same month (November of this year). “We don’t see them as competition at all,” said Suarez. “The guys at [Halo 4 studio] 343, they’re going to make a great game, we’re going to want to play it, much like they’re hopefully going to want to play Black Ops 2. I really want everybody’s game to succeed, you know. The more types of games that succeed, the better it is for our business overall.”
While this assertion is certainly being made because Treyarch wants to maintain a good relationship with Microsoft (which is indeed better for sales), it’s not as if it doesn’t have a foundation. Even though Black Ops 2 will take place in the near future, it’s still going to essentially be a game about modern warfare. Halo 4 on the other hand is part of a far-future science fiction franchise with an entirely different storyline, atmosphere, and gameplay experience. In this sense the games are not direct competitors, since all they really have in common is their FPS genre.