As excitement mounts for Battlefield 6, a prominent analyst claims that EA is planning to copy the release schedule and studio set-up for Call Of Duty.
Not for the first time, EA is getting excited about the prospect of Battlefield becoming a true rival to Call Of Duty. This has happened multiple times in the past, with previous entries, but the hype behind Battlefield 6 does seem especially potent, especially given how many people have been playing the open beta.
It’s still unlikely to come very close to the sales figures or player numbers for this year’s Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 but if it does well then it will encourage EA to plough more resources into the franchise and, inevitably, create more sequels.
According to one industry figure the plan is to eventually have yearly sequels, by mimicking the way Call Of Duty works, with three separate studios working in rotation.
Ignoring the fact that the Call Of Duty system has become increasingly unpredictable in recent years, as games take longer to make, the comments suggests that it will be five or six years before EA is able to churn out sequels at the rate they want.
That sounds believable enough, and getting carried away with the potential success of Battlefield, before it’s had a chance to prove itself, is certainly something EA has done multiple times before, but the problem with the rumour is that it comes from controversial industry analyst Michael Patcher.
Not only that but the information is from the same podcast in which Patcher claims that Sony’s live service game Fairgame$ had been cancelled. Something which he ended up retracting just hours later, while admitting, ‘I have no info on the game at all.’
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That was a rumour though, which Pachter does not usually peddle in, whereas the Battlefield information supposedly comes from personal conversations with EA developers.
‘I talked to EA, Byron Beede, good dude, former Activision guy who worked at Infinity Ward with Vince [Zampella]. He’s running the Battlefield franchise. And their goal is three studios making Battlefield on a three year basis. So they can get to Battlefield annually,’ said Patcher.
‘He said it’s going to take five or six years before they can get two in a row, so we’re not going to get there for a while. But that’s their plan.’
If that information had come from anyone other than Pachter it would have had few doubters, but so far there’s been no attempt from Byron Beede to deny the story, which is something at least.
Especially since it became available on Game Pass, there’s been some debate as to whether it still makes sense to have a new Call Of Duty game ever year, especially as publishers now make more money from microtransactions than they do game sales.
While yearly sequels used to be commonplace in the games industry they’re now almost exclusively limited to sports titles and Call Of Duty.
Whether Battlefield will be added to that list remains to be seen, as even if Battlefield 6 is a major hit a lot can change in the five years necessary to set up the new studio system Pachter is describing.
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