The danger is straying too far from what makes it Battlefield, and then there would be the threat to the Battlefield Premium program which already provides a two-year tail.
EA currently backs a two-year cycle for Battlefield preferring to monetise Battlefield Premium’s subscription like appeal for new add-ons released in the run up to the next big title.
“The challenges are you’ve got to most likely do it out of two studios because it’s hard,” EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen said at a UBS conference. ”It’s a two-year project.”
”Battlefield takes us about two years to develop and so you want to make sure that you’re sharing talent across studios, so you keep core talent of the product and the experience for the consumer there. You also want to be really careful that you don’t destroy the franchise along the way. You got to make it exciting and different, but at the same time you want to make sure you maintain a great franchise,” he continued.
”And Battlefield is a product that doesn’t just sell once,” he explained, ”it sells for 24-months associated with not just Battlefield, but all the additional Battlefield Premium activities that the consumer wants. So you’ve got to be careful that you don’t destroy some of that tail that is on the Battlefield product.”
DICE is one busy studio having just released Battlefield 4 with work continuing on its many expansions due over the course of this year and 2014, but also has the open-world Mirror’s Edge 2 and then new Star Wars: Battlefront franchise in their new Los Angeles studio.
CFO Jorgensen added there was more UFC in development and a ”magnificent Dragon Age… That should be a big hit for us next year.” There have been mixed messages from EA execs whether BioWare’s RPG Dragon Age: Inquisition will make it for a release in late 2014 or slip into 2015.
