It’s now official that the next Battlefield will come to next-gen consoles (PS5 and Xbox Scarlett) as well as boasting full-on live service mechanics. Another website managed to get their hands on an extended transcript that depicts EA’s CEO, Andrew Wilson, admitting the upcoming title is coming to next-gen consoles with a form of microtransactions.

Thanks to mp1st.com, a closer look at the next Battlefield game slated for Fiscal Year 2022 is now up for gamers and fans alike to dissect.

Firstly, Stephen Ju wanted to know during the investor call why the next Battlefield game is “skipping a year,” and what’s the reasoning behind it as well as plans for live-service mechanics in upcoming games.

Here’s Wilson’s response:

“Good question. So, still that resource constraints, I’ll say that up front, but it was a very thought through decision for us and there was a few factors that came into play. And the first is that we still see a burgeoning opportunity with Battlefield V. And as I talked about in the prepared remarks, we’re about to launch a whole new theater of war with the Pacific theater and the team is still really thinking about, how they can continue to drive that service on a going forward basis. So, we think there’s opportunity still inside the Battlefield V experience, as it was built as a bite large service from the beginning.

 

The second is we now effectively have an annualized shooter Apex Legends and we see tremendous growth opportunity that can continue to engage, as we talked about in the prepared remarks, now over 70 million players. And as Blake talked about, we have opportunity to take that into other regions and to other platforms. And we think is a tremendous growth opportunity on that and want to make sure that we give that the time that it deserves.

 

And then third, as we thought about building for the next Battlefield. Battlefield has always been cutting edge, leading edge, both in terms of visual fidelity, and in gameplay and in multiplayer play. And as a team really began working against that. It became a parent to us that, launching into the next gen platforms was going to offer tremendous opportunity for innovation. But we really wanted to give the install base some opportunity to grow. And believe that in combination with the first three things I talked about launching battlefield in FY ‘22 is a really strong move for us and presents us with an opportunity for strong two years of growth.”

In short, EA is hoping that Apex Legends continues to do what it is doing yearly, while the company wants to ship the next Battlefield on the forthcoming-gen consoles, but Wilson explains that they want said consoles to establish a user base before launching the next Battlefield game.

The publication site pivots into the money-making side of the conference call and cites Wilson saying that the next battlefield will hone in on live-service mechanics. This means more cosmetics to buy, a battle-pass system, and other features that aren’t happy on one’s wallet:

“In terms of the overall franchise direction, I don’t think you should read into this a dramatic change in franchise direction other than it will be driven around live service as the nature of our industry now. It will be cutting edge. It will be high fidelity. It will be doing things in the context of multi-play and social play and competition that Battlefields to this point have not done. And we do believe it will be a really, really exciting title in FY ‘22.”

The tl;dr of this is the next Battlefield is in the works and will release after next-gen consoles build up a substantial user base, which means base-PS4 and Xbox One users might have a chance at snagging a physical or digital copy. Apex Legends is doing well enough that its live-service features will make it into the next Battlefield game, but in the meantime, EA and DICE want to milk as much money out of Battlefield V.