EA Says When They Get Battlefield “Right” It’s a “Giant Franchise;” Overwhelmed by BF Labs Feedback
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Alongside confirming that the new Battlefield game will be released before March 2026 ends, Electronic Arts (EA) also discussed the Battlefield franchise during the company’s quarterly earnings call.
While EA CEO Andrew Wilson “argued” that they have released high-quality and “incredible” Battlefield games since Battlefield 4, he did acknowledge that they are aiming to do a better job involving the community in the development process, which is why they started Battlefield Labs.
EA Using Battlefield Labs to Help Players “Understand” What They’re Building
EA was asked during the Q&A portion of the earnings report on what key learnings EA has learned to position the new Battlefield game for creative and commercial success, and how they would compare some of these learnings to previous versions of the game that the publisher has released throughout the years.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson answered: “Let me take the first part of that and then I’ll hand it off to Stuart for the second part. This Battlefield, as we’ve said many times, is the biggest Battlefield we’ve ever made. And of course, you would expect us to say that, but we’ve certainly had the biggest team behind it, and we’ve given them as much time as they need to get to real quality, aligned with our core Battlefield community.
If you go back to our Battlefields, all the way back to Battlefield 4, I might argue that we’ve released incredible games every time. They’ve always been high quality. We’ve always worked closely with the community, but we haven’t always worked as closely as we should have. We haven’t always really worked to help them understand the things that we’re building, and for us to understand the things that they really want out of a Battlefield.
We know that when we get it right, Battlefield is a giant franchise, and often the biggest shooter in the year. And so this time, we wanted to ensure that one, our player base and our global community had a better understanding of the things that we were building, and how we were building, and some of the approaches that we’re taking to building. But more importantly, we wanted them to have the ability to feedback on map construction, weapon lineup, progression, all of the things that make Battlefield great at Battlefield scale. And given that this is the biggest Battlefield ever, there was really no other way to go about that other than Battlefield Labs in the way we have. And I would tell you, we’ve been overwhelmed by the feedback, not just the positive feedback that our players are giving us around what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, the scale and nature of what we’re doing, but also just their willingness to deeply engage with us through this process.
You know, hundreds of thousands of people have weighed into this and really given us feedback that is going to help us tune and balance this incredible scale game. And as we now, as we move into the next phase, you know, we’ll start to open up to a wider audience, bringing in more across North America and Europe and starting with Asia. And so again, this is all about two things. One is helping our community understand the nature of the things that we’re building. But more important, have us understand the things that they want out of this game and ensuring we’re tuning and balancing and polishing in a way that is aligned with their expectations. And we know when we get that right, the opportunities is incredibly large.”
In the same report, EA revealed that Battlefield Labs had over 600,000 players sign up and over 350 million views of Battlefield content since its announcement. As Wilson mentioned, the testing branch will open up to Asia soon, though there is no word on the exact date yet.
What we’ve seen so far of the new Battlefield game indicates that DICE is back in rare form, and we’re hoping the official reveal in summer will knock us out of our boots. Of course, we’re still skeptical on how well the shooter will actually fare and how EA will be treating it post-launch, but this optimism most players have with the recent leaks should signal to DICE that they’re on the right track.
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