Ex-Blizzard President Criticizes Call of Duty

Wow, okay, so I stumbled across this wild bit from Mike Ybarra, who used to run Blizzard. He’s got some strong thoughts about the gaming scene. Like, seriously, he’s practically predicting that Battlefield 6 is gonna stomp all over Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. Yeah, “boot stomp” was the phrase he threw out there. Kinda harsh, but hey, dude seems to have some beef with how CoD’s doing things lately.

Oh, and get this — Ybarra had his stint at Blizzard around 2019 to 2024, leaving after the whole Microsoft deal wrapped up. Now he’s out here sharing his spicy takes on Twitter or something. But anyway — hold up, where was I? Oh right, CoD’s supposed decline. Ybarra’s saying it’s been on a downhill slide since, like, 2016, mainly ‘cause of cheaters, clunky UI, and what he calls “rainbow colors.” Not entirely sure what that last part means, but I guess it’s colorful?

Meanwhile, Activision’s not sweating it. They’re pretty much like, “Meh, we’re unstoppable; CoD’s too big to fail.” Sounds like famous last words, if you ask me. But who knows, they seem confident. Battlefield 6 is already making noise with its beta. I saw somewhere that it hit over 330,000 players on Steam. Wild, right? Think about all those people just itching to dive in!

But it’s not like Treyarch and Raven are just chilling around a campfire, singing kumbaya. Nah, they’re actually working on new ways to deal with the cheating madness — planning some fancy tech upgrades and whatnot. Sounds promising, but let’s see if it actually makes a dent.

So yeah, the gaming landscape this year is gonna be a battlefield (pun totally intended). Are gamers ready? Maybe. Or, maybe they’ll just play whatever looks shiny and fun. Who knows — it’s a mystery.