The future could contain a great deal more Battlefield games, if one analyst’s predictions are correct.
Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey thinks that EA may be considering putting the Battlefield series on a annual release schedule, so that it might better compete with Activision’s immensely-popular Call of Duty series.
According to Hickey’s research note, EA could alternate between the main Battlefield series – which will see its first full-scale update later this year since the release of Battlefield 2 in 2005 – and the Bad Company series. It’s not that unreasonable a prediction; EA CEO Frank Riccitiello has made it very clear in the past that EA wants to break Activision’s grip on the shooter market, and matching it game-for-game could be a step towards that.
It would mean a change in the way that the Battlefield games are made, however. After all, Activision has three studios working solely on CoD: Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and now Sledgehammer Games. DICE couldn’t possibly put out a new, triple-A game every year by itself, so EA would have to delegate some of the work to another studio. That could be its Danger Close studio – which previously worked with DICE on Medal of Honor – or some new studio entirely.
All of this is just supposition of course. It’s equally possible that EA will just up its marketing efforts for the Battlefield series, but alternate between it and Medal of Honor. There’s also Respawn to consider – the studio set up by former Infinity Ward heads Jason West and Vince Zampella – which is also working on a new shooter project. Perhaps EA will elect not to play Activision at its own game, but instead try to change the rules.
Battlefield 3 is scheduled to come out later this year.
Source: CVG
Published: May 9, 2011 01:08 pm