Riccitiello: Elite coming too early

John Riccitiello believes Activision is "leading with its chin" when it comes to launching Elite.

Speaking to Industry Gamers, the EA CEO believes that Elite would have been better off” launching after Modern Warfare 3 had been released, and that Activision pushing the service is a response to the quality of Battlefield 3.

I don’t know what’s in Elite right now, but based on what I’ve seen, I think they might’ve been better off holding the Elite thing and been a little more careful,” said Riccitiello.

[They could have] shown up a month after they launched Modern Warfare 3. ‘Hey, we’ve got an expansion pack. It’s going to be X amount of money, but if you give us Y amount of money, you get extra stuff’. As opposed to leading with their chin.

I think the reason they led with their chin is that they needed to say something against what was clearly a more powerful presentation of Battlefield 3 over Modern Warfare. So they needed something to say. I think they picked the wrong thing, but there’s a lot of months between now and November, so they’ve got plenty of time to recover.”