Whispers of EA’s apparent disappointment with Battlefield 2042 have been circulating since last month, but we may finally have more context for what the company believes went wrong.
A report by Xfire states that during a recent company-wide meeting at EA, several key executives spoke on what went wrong with Battlefield 2042, including chief studios officer Laura Miele.
“It’s really important to acknowledge when we have misses,” Miele said. “This is certainly the case with the Battlefield launch, which failed to meet the expectations of our players, and also clearly missed our own expectations.”
Miele reportedly went on to outline several factors that set Battlefield 2042 up for its difficult launch. The Frostbite game engine, which every modern Battlefield title utilizes, went through a massive overhaul, adding 18 months to Battlefield 2042’s development time.
“Add up all of this new innovation, all of this ambition for the new project, and then you add a global pandemic halfway into the project, where the game teams had to work from home,” Miele continues. “we ended up with more new variables in development than we have ever experienced before.”
The discussion reportedly encompassed Halo Infinite’s surprise multiplayer beta launch on Nov. 15, 2021, and how that game hurt Battlefield 2042’s reception considerably because the latter came out mere days after and was far more “polished” than EA’s first-person shooter.
Most would agree that Halo Infinite’s brilliant multiplayer couldn’t have come at a worse time for EA. After all, one was free-to-play and crisp as can be, while the other was drowning in negative attention.
Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.
