DICE won’t be making a new Battlefield game in 2014, in case you were wondering or worrying or simply hoping that they’d keep on focusing on making Battlefield 4 better.
That word comes from gaming business analyst Michael Pachter, who says he was told as much by EA management yesterday.
“Although they have not yet announced a version of Battlefield for FY:15,” Pachter wrote in a note to investors and media, “they confirmed that our understanding is spot on and that if a version of Battlefield were to be released in FY:15, it would be developed by a studio other than DICE.” FY15 = April 1, 2014-March 31, 2015.
DICE, which is currently focused on fixingBattlefield 4 and then making more BF4 DLC — oh, and making Star Wars Battlefront and Mirror’s Edge 2 — has a full plate.
Of course, you might say, DICE wouldn’t be making a new Battlefield next year! They’ve been in an every-other-year pattern for major Battlefield games of late, trading off with the now-shelved Medal of Honour series. That shelving of MoH could be a sign that EA will do a Battlefield every year. And, why not? Activision does a Call of Duty every year, right? To pull that off, Activision gives its studios staggered two-year development cycles to pull that off. The 2014 CoD, for example, will presumably be made by Treyarch, the studio that made 2012’s CoD, not 2013’s.
Given that DICE is a multi-team studio, it’s conceivable that different DICE teams could have started working on staggered annualised released of Battlefield, but that’s not what EA seems to be telling Pachter. We’ve reached out to EA for further clarification too.
EA will presumably put out a big military shooter against a new Call of Duty next year. What will it be? Who will make it? Guess away.
As for DICE churning out Battlefields, looks like they could use a break anyway, no?
Comments
14 responses to “If There Is A Battlefield In 2014, It Won’t Be From DICE”
Battlefront could be out next year but I doubt it. I don’t see why there needs to be a Battlefield (or similar game) out every year anyway? CoD does it, big fucking deal, more then half of those games have been appaling pieces of shit – and the rest are only slightly better.
Let DICE/EA take longer making their games, we might get something good. Battlefield 4 certainly wasn’t bad, not amazing but fun.
EDIT: Titanfall…
Oh, I wouldn’t put it past EA to hire another studio to create another Battlefield game for every other year DICE doesn’t.
Scuttlebutt has it that it’s going to be Visceral (Dead Space) making it.
Personally, I’d be happy for a new Bad Company game, provided that the campaigns had the comedy elements intact, every 2 years.
We, of course, can only hope that they take the opportunity afforded by a 2 year dev cycle to polish & QA the bejesus out of these games before release.
Sorry, the polish will be ruined by microtransactions, and QA will be skipped to get the game out before CoD.
I think Battlefront was confirmed for 2015. However I believe that is being made by DICE LA which used to be Danger Close who made the last couple of MOH games and the recent China Rising BF4 DLC. I assume it’d be that early in the year FPS slot that EA filled with Crysis 3 this year and next year with Titanfall.
One possibility which I haven’t seen mentioned is that DICE might release more BF next year but not as a new title. The DLC runs out mid next year. What if they announce another set of DLC?
As for BF every couple of years. I’d be happy if they alternated between a main battlefield game and then with something like Bad Company. Which is similar but different. What if Danger Close AKA DICE LA is working on another Battlefield spin off franchise.
Danger Close (DICE LA) are doing Battlefront.
Well they’ll be releasing the DLC over the next 12 months if the BF3 model is anything to go by so it’s pretty unlikely they’d be worrying about getting a full release out as well.
I wonder if Bad Company counts as a true Battlefield…
Beef doesn’t need to be a yearly thing.
They’ll be working on another Medal of Honor I guess.
I thought Titanfall was supposed to be taking Medal of Honor’s place in EA’s shooter lineup? Maybe they’ll dump Crysis, which is the very definition of mediocrity and replace it with another Battlefield. Perhaps they could get Criterion to do it? They’ve got FPS history with Black which was pretty good for its time and they’ve said they’re done with racing games for the time being.
Titanfall and Crysis are both IPs owned by their developers, as opposed to being owned by EA.
Marketing for EA Partners games is, without exception, completely woeful (remember Fuse?).
I wouldn’t be surprised if they felt they needed their own shooters.
Well they’ve basically got Microsoft doing the Titanfall marketing for them, I guess. But no amount of marketing can help Crysis. Crytek make great tech but lousy games.
I’m inclined to believe this, I just noticed the release schedule for the last bf4 dlc is “summer 2014” (or mid 2014 ).
This does raise the question of ‘do we as gamers really need such a rapid release cycle?’, BF3is still an awesome game, and BF4 just feels like a really crap dlc for BF3 with yet more grinding for weapons that just suck.
Yeah look at the UMP-9