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Industry News
2016/12

Next Battlefield Game Is A Couple Of Years Away, Says EA

Electronic Arts’ chief financial officer, Blake Jorgensen, attended the Nasdaq 35th Investor Program Conference in London, England that took place on November 30th last month. He made some interesting comments about Battlefield and Star Wars: Battlefront 2.

According to DualShockers, Jorgensen stated that the next Battlefield game is a couple of years out from release…

“We won’t have another Battlefield back for a couple of years, next year we’ll have Battlefront, the Star Wars game.”

If Battlefield stays on a three year cycle — the way Activision currently has the factory-made Call of Duty games on a three year cycle — then it could go back to being great. In fact, based on Battlefield 1, I would say EA and DICE have resolved to make Battlefield great again.

Jorgensen also goes on to say that for Star Wars: Battlefront 2 they’ve heard the criticisms and will apparently address them by launching the game with more content. I don’t think it was just the lack of content that was the problem with Star Wars: Battlefront but the lack of gameplay depth. You couldn’t roll, you had no way of getting out of tight binds if you didn’t have a jetpack, and the gameplay was just all around generic and uninspired.

A lot of the cool moments from Star Wars: Battlefront 2 from Pandemic Games were nowhere to be seen in DICE’s rendition. You couldn’t land or hijack vehicles (they were acquired by power-ups), you accessed a lot of special equipment through card bonuses, and the lack of life bars meant that there was no longer a purpose for healers. It was just lame.

Nevertheless, Jorgensen states that they’re compensating some criticisms with plans to include Rogue One: A Star Wars Story content in the upcoming expansion into the first Star Wars: Battlefront and they’re also planning on continuing that trend by introducing more of the recent movie content into the upcoming sequel game…

“There seems to be no waning in excitement around the Star Wars world. We’ve got another movie coming up obviously in a few weeks, and people are very excited about it. So we’re looking forward to bringing to the table next year a much bigger, much more exciting Battlefront for consumers.”

There were some complaints last year that Star Wars: Battlefront lacked The Force Awakens DLC, and EA used the excuse that it didn’t line-up with the continuity of the in-game universe. And let me just state for the record that that is a bullcrap excuse. Some rumors spread that EA didn’t want to pay extra for The Force Awakens‘ licensed content and decided to settle with the stuff they already had.

Anyway, you can look for the new Rogue One VR experience to be made available for Star Wars: Battlefront on December 6th.

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