The excitement around Battlefield 6 is pretty palpable. Player counts are high, and the queue for the game is consistently long. And former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra seems to be taking notice of the franchise’s return to prominence.

Battlefield 6, by all accounts, is set up for success early

Battlefield will boot stomp CoD this year. But the real win here is CoD won’t be lazy anymore, and we’ll all get better FPS games for it.

— Mike Ybarra 😇 (@Qwik) August 8, 2025

Posting on social media, Ybarra says that “Battlefield will boot stomp CoD this year”. For some reason, “Boot stomp” is a wildly funny phrase to me. But I love the confidence in what’s been shown so far. Because we can all see it. Battlefield 6 feels like what we’ve all come to know and love from the series. And with some of the smoke that’s been coming Call of Duty’s way, especially over the last few years, I can see why someone would say that.

But Mike Ybarra’s statement isn’t about fanning the flames of ridiculous tribalism. It’s about a refrain that has become all too common in gaming: the need for competition. Call of Duty has been a constant in the FPS space. And while the Battlefield series has been largely consistent in quality, it feels like Activision/Treyarch has never really paid much attention. But I don’t think they can ignore how Battlefield 6 is looking and the response it’s getting so far.

Ybarra is right, we should absolutely get better FPS games when both of these heavyweights start swinging at each other. See how easy it is to express the desire for the FPS genre to be better without resorting to ridiculous hats? I never want these games to fail, even if I stop playing them, because I believe their quality to be lacking or a general boredom with what they’re providing. Competition is always good in gaming.

Step up your game and get rewarded. That is how it should be.