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Electronic Arts and Activision have long held a rivalry thanks to being two of the largest games publishers in the market today. The rivalry seems to hit particularly hard in the first-person shooter market where EA is pushing its Battlefield franchise pretty hard and Activision holds global dominance with Call of Duty.

The rivalry has gotten so bad that EA's own John Riccitiello saying that he wanted Call of Duty to 'rot from the core'. Ouch! It is this sort of scathing comment that makes EA's recent change of heart all the more mystifying. After launching Call of Duty Elite alongside Modern Warfare 3 this past November, Activision has had some major success with the subscription service. While it got off to a rocky start, Activision is reporting overwhelmingly favorable impressions of the service from their users.

For its part, Electronic Arts is impressed. On Call of Duty Elite, EA's Riccitiello said, "To Activision's credit, what they did with Elite - certainly when you speak to retailers who were selling the cards, and you speak to gamers who think it's a great deal - they've done a phenomenal job in marketing digital content going forward."

"Certainly we've got a digital content flow yet to be announced on that," continued Riccitiello. "We will look at different business models that will make a good value for the consumer. We continue to look at how we keep the disc in the drive, as we say."

These comments are just the latest in a string of positive praise coming out of the previously negative Electronic Arts headquarters, leading us to believe that it is very likely that EA will put together something similar in the future; perhaps for the rumored Medal of Honor release that is in the pipeline?

We're just glad we had a chance to utilize our 'EA <3's Activision' graphic.