Bobby Kotick doesn't give many interviews. He doesn't really need to. Via a few off-the-cuff remarks, the chief executive and president of Activision has become one of the most quoted executives in the industry, his statements pounced upon and often mangled by games industry bloggers who see him as the epitomy of corporate evil.

He has certainly presided over a turbulent year for the mammoth third-party games publisher. Massive sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops were countered by the apparent axing of the previously successful Guitar Hero franchise, and a legal spat with the co-founders of Infinity Ward, the creator of the million-selling Modern Warfare titles. This Christmas, Modern Warfare 3 is likely to bring in at least $1bn for Activision, and its rivalry with EA's Battlefield 3 title is likely to define the games market for the year.

So what does Kotick make of EA? Has he been surprised by the backlash against the new social gaming service Call of Duty: Elite? And what support will Activision give to the two new hardware platforms announced at E3 earlier this month: the Nintendo Wii U and the Sony PS Vita? Here's what he had to tell us.

How was E3 for Activision?
I think we had a fantastic presence – I would say the feedback we've received has been the best overall that we've ever had at E3. There were two products in particular: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, obviously, and Skylanders. It was productive and worthwhile for us.

Do you still feel that E3 is relevant?
I think it's relevant from the perspective of being able to gather retailers, journalists and investors all in one place. And because it's in LA [where Activision has its corporate HQ] it's a little more efficient for us than it might be for a lot of other companies.

The showdown between Battlefield and MW3 was a key focus this year – is that sense of competition exciting?
To be honest with you, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about our competition.

EA was very keen to stoke up some rivalry. John Riccitiello claimed to have "got your goat" with the Battlefield demo…
You know, I just don't comment on our competitors' products. That's not something we feel the need to do.

Call of Duty: Elite has been greeted with a certain amount of controversy – there have been criticisms about monitising social content. How would you respond to that?
We started out with a desire to give back to our players; we wanted to add capabilities that were the direct result of research conducted with our audience. We have tens of millions of players, and we went out to our audience and we solicited their thoughts and opinions on what would make the game – on a free basis – more fun to play.

So the bulk of what we've done is to create a free service that offers a whole host of new, interesting and well-differentiated capabilities that will get our audience really enthusiastic and excited about playing. We have very articulate audiences – they're able to prioritise what's important; they're able to give us clarity on features that they think will be useful. So from that perspective, what we're delivering is the direct result of player input – and a lot of it.

There were also a certain number of things that our players wanted to see, with the recognition that those particular services would be costly for us to develop. And we spent a lot of time talking about what's a fair way to charge for what are premium services. In that regard too we got great audience feedback. So [Elite was based on] very well-informed research that goes deeper and is more extensive than anything we've done before. I think the combination of offerings is very well aligned with the interests of our communities.

Activision has expressed its support for the Wii U and Vita. How relevant do you think specialist hardware is in the new era of smartphone, tablet and cloud-based gaming?
There will always be a need for specialised hardware to satisfy the needs of gamers. With the Wii U … from a development perspective, having a Nintendo device that is on parity with the other hardware from a graphics perspective was really necessary. For the kinds of games we create, it was becoming very difficult for us to support the Wii with the expectations that our gamers have. I think that the user-interface itself is very clever – there will be a lot of innovation to come from having the second screen. It's also critically important that you can use the existing physical interfaces with the new device because those are really compelling. Nintendo has always done a very good job of thinking about the user experience and this is no exception.

So this is something you can bring your core games on to? Might we see Modern Warfare and Prototype on Wii U?
Well, without telling you our title plans, it's now more possible to do deep rich multiplayer games – we need more clarity from Nintendo on the online capabilities, but we've had development systems for a while now and we're very enthusiastic about it. As for the Vita have you played on it?

Yes, I've played WipeOut and a few of the other titles…
It is a fantastic piece of hardware. Technically, we're super excited about what we can do on it, it's really something incredible. The question is, where is the market? I think the pricing was surprisingly affordable, the product itself is really great – so the questions is, is there a need in the marketplace for a very specialised portable device of that capability? Hopefully there will be because it's a really nice product and its very well differentiated from what you can get in even the most capable smartphone or tablet today.

You must be heightening your support for smartphones and tablets though? Those markets are booming.
Yeah, but as I usually say, we're never the first guys into the market – we're very deliberate about how we enter. We like to do it with the highest quality products that are appealing to the broadest possible audience. But yes, those are market opportunities that area starting to emerge. I don't think they are going to be big opportunities for revenue growth in the short term, but over the long term, they're going to be exciting.

Talking about new opportunities, you seem to be investing heavily into toy/game crossovers with Wappy dog and Skylanders. How did these come about?
With Skylanders, it really started out with a vision that one of our studios had to create a Pixar-style character universe – they had a clever story and a good gameplay idea that was basically a way to bring your toys to life. For us, that was an interesting and appealing concept – and if you think about pathways to innovation, physical interfaces have become a much more important part of the game experience; the ability to use new technologies as we're employing them in Skylanders – the ability to have two-way communications between a toy and a game, then being able to transport your characters and abilities across every possible platform that has a micro processor and a display – it is all very interesting.

The thing about having a toy that actually keeps track of your skills and capabilities or how you progress within a game is that it actually creates a currency for kids. The way that you interact with characters cross platform, the way the portal is able to unlock these magic moments you have with the characters - I've never seen anything quite like this. But launching new intellectual property, especially of this complexity, is the hardest thing to do in video games. I'm very excited about it's prospects, but it's very risky.

Can we expect more announcements about original IP this year?
We're always developing new IP – the two things that are currently being speculated on most are the new MMO from Blizzard and the work that Bungie is doing. Both of those are entirely new intellectual properties.

Will we hear anything on those soon?
Nothing I can talk about right now.

Do you think you'll be able to apply any lessons you learned from the demise of Guitar Hero to your new IP, or even to Call of Duty?
I think we've always said, if we don't think we can deliver great gameplay and innovative experiences, we won't necessary put a product out. With Guitar Hero we didn't think the products that we could put out this year or next year would be right for delivering innovation to your audience – we felt that taking time to innovate was the right thing for the franchise.

So both of those franchises will return?
Until we can deliver a really high level of innovation and tap into the high level of creativity and inspiration of the people we have making games, we won't put the products out. That goes for everything – we've always subscribed to that philosophy.