Today, during Electronic Arts’ quarterly conference call for investors and analysts, chief executive officer Andrew Wilson talked about the next Battlefield game following the reveal that it’ll come in fiscal year 2022.
Wilson was asked to talk about the decision making that went into having the franchise skip fiscal year 2021.
He explained that it was a very “thought-through” decision for the publisher and there are a few factors that came into play.
First of all, there are more “burgeoning opportunities” with Battlefield V and the team is still thinking of new ways to drive the live service for that.
Secondly EA believes it already has what is basically an annualized shooter with Apex Legends.
Thirdly, there is a matter of platforms.
“As we thought about building the next battlefield, Battlefield has always been cutting edge, bleeding edge both in terms of visual fidelity, and in gameplay, and in multiplayer play.
As the team really begins working against that, it became apparent to us that launching into the next-gen platforms was going to offer tremendous opportunities for innovation, but we really wanted to give the installed base some opprtunity to grow.
We believe that in combination with the first two things I talked about, launching Battlefield in FY 2020 is a really strong move for us and presents us with an opportunity of strong cohesive growth. “
Wilson then added that we shouldn’t read into the move a dramatic change in the direction of the franchise, mentioning a few more details:
“It will be driven around live services as it is 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 multiplayer and social play and competition that the Battlefields at this point have not done, and I do believe it’ll be a really, really exciting title in FY22.”
If you’d like to learn more about Electronic Arts’ financial performance during the past quarter, you can rad our full dedicated article with plenty of info.
