EA CEO Acknowledges Player “Trepidation” Over New Battlefield Game Since BF2024 and BFV Didn’t “Restonate” Strongly With Community
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With the reveal of Battlefield Labs, publisher Electronic Arts also snuck in a few seconds of gameplay of the new Battlefield game. While it is a trailer and all that, what was revealed looked impressive to get fans a tad excited that we’re back to seeing the franchise return to form.
However, most Battlefield veterans are now cautious of the new game, with most reminding players not to get swept up in the hype and not to pre-order it.
EA’s CEO Knows Players Are Skeptical of the New Battlefield Game
Most social media platforms these days are keen to remind Battlefield fans not to pre-order the game because, based on the past few BF games, EA has not delivered.
One Battlefield fan page even has multiple people reminding not to pre-order even if the trailer looked good.
This thought hasn’t been lost on EA CEO Andrew Wilson. During the publisher’s latest quarterly earnings report, Wilson was asked about the community reception to the Battlefield Labs announcement and how it was relative to the publisher’s expectations.
Wilson answers the question, ” I would say the response to the play test and the Battlefield Labs initiative has been overwhelmingly positive and well beyond our expectations, which is great. It’s demonstrative of just the fan love out there for this storage franchise. There’s really two big reasons why our team is taking this approach. The first is, as I think you talk about, there is some trepidation amongst the core community as to what this Battlefield will be. Battlefield is this incredible franchise at unbelievable scale with destruction and vehicles and all kinds of things as much loved in the community.”
Wilson continues, admitting how the last two entries in the franchise — Battlefield 2042 and Battlefield V — didn’t exactly resonate well with the community. “The last two iterations of Battlefield have not resonated as strongly and have been found wanting by meaningful parts of the community globally. And so we do appreciate and understand that there is some trepidation there. And this development team the biggest development team we’ve ever had is committed to working very closely with our players to ensure that they understand what we’re doing, they feed into the tuning and balancing at scale of this game,” Wilson notes.
The EA boss ends his statement by reiterating how this is the biggest Battlefield the publisher has built to date. “The second reason is it is the biggest Battlefield we will ever build or at least we have ever built to date. It exists on an incredible scale, both in terms of breadth and depth of gameplay in terms of access points, in terms of way that you can play this game. And a big part of the modern development process that the team is taking is to test and tune everything to ensure that even as we launch something of this scale, it launches both stable and secure. And I think the combination of those two things is driving this initiative, which is Battlefield Labs, and the way the community has responded been very positive to date.”
It’s an understatement to say the two Battlefield games didn’t resonate “strongly.” While Battlefield V might seem like a good Battlefield game right now, it wasn’t the case at launch. DICE introduced unnecessary “innovations” such as Attririon, which the studio was eventually forced to pedal back on. After numerous title updates, DICE eventually brought the game to a good enough state, but by that time, the player base was already moving on to the next shooter.
Battlefield 2042 seemed to fare worse. The game deviated from the core Battlefield formula by integrating specialists instead of classes, which the community wasn’t on board with. Our review of it at launch reflected that, as we mention, “The best we can hope for right now is to wait for Season 1, or the succeeding seasons to see if DICE has fixed enough issues, added in enough standard quality of life improvements, and of course, content, to warrant a purchase or to give the game enough game time. Until then, this is one war you might want to think twice before signing up for.”
After countless updates that saw the transition of specialists to more traditional classes, BF2042 was in a better state. However, as with BFV, most of the player base has moved on, given the time it took DICE to patch the game to a good enough state. So many changes were made that we felt we needed to re-review the game in 2023.
DICE can redeem itself once more with the still-untitled new Battlefield game. While no release date for it has been set, EA has mentioned that it will be released before April 2026.
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