…so here, for your amusement good Dragons and Dragonettes, is Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello throwing down some fighting words against Vivendi, Activision, and Call of Duty developer Treyarch:

“I don’t know that having two guys that probably don’t play the games, in the form of the CEO of Vivendi and the CEO of Activision, come out and say ‘Treyarch is our lead developer,’ like you could anoint that,” says the silver-haired Lothario. “They didn’t make a 90-rated game; I think it’s 86 now. I don’t think review scores are the be-all, end-all, but we all know a mid-90 when we see it, but this was mid-80s. I don’t think you could anoint them by an executive saying, ‘it’s so.’

“The question, I think, really is, ‘what developer is going to put forward the next great FPS that sort of follows [what Infinity Ward did]? It’s wishful thinking, and let’s hope for Activision’s sake they’re right. I think it’s far from proven that the gaming consumer views a product from Treyarch in the same category as a product from what was Infinity Ward.”

Drop your thoughts on this matter in the comments. I don’t really have a horse in the FPS race — the last FPS I played was Halo, and the last FPS I played before that was Counterstrike — so there’s nothing in particular I can really say about Call of Duty or EA’s Battlefield series. But I do like watching the respective CEOs spar like this.