Battlefield 1 breathed new life into Electronic Arts’ long-running shooter franchise, but don’t expect to get a new installment in the near future. The publisher has opted to give the franchise more time to cook as it focuses on another major shooter series, Star Wars Battlefront.
At the Nasdaq 35th Investor Program yesterday, EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen stated that there is no Battlefield title planned for 2017, adding that the company “won’t have another Battlefield back for a couple of years. Next year we’ll have Battlefront, the Star Wars game.”
This strategy should give Battlefield and Battlefront developer Dice more time to squash out bugs that have plagued some of its games post-release. The most infamous case of this was Battlefield 4. Rushed to store shelves in order to launch alongside the new PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, the game was so unstable that making it through an entire multiplayer match was a miracle for several months. The following game, Battlefield: Hardline, was delayed by several months in order to avoid repeating these events.
Last year’s Star Wars: Battlefront fared better in this sense, though its lack of single-player content and shallow progression stand in stark contrast to Battlefield 1.
“It’s a beautiful game, people loved it,” Jorgensen said, referring to the first Battlefront. “I think if there was criticism, they just wanted more. And so we’re taking that criticism to heart as we build the next game and try to address any of the issues that [players] had.”
This likely means that a traditional single-player campaign will be included in a new Battlefront game. Battlefield 1‘s solo portion was lauded back in October for its mature, sensitive handling of World War I, its compelling short stories, and gameplay that blended elements of the game’s multiplayer component and emphasized individual soldiers’ efforts rather than Call of Duty-style set pieces.
