One of the prevailing impressions of the Battlefield 6 beta, which wrapped up today after two gangbuster weekends, was that Battlefield has finally caught up to Call of Duty. It has its snappy gunplay, it has its attachments, and it will eventually have its free-to-play battle royale mode.
EA believes anything CoD can do, it can do better—but what about annualized releases? According to longtime industry analyst Michael Pachter, that’s exactly what Battlefield Studios, a four-studio collaboration between DICE, Ripple Effect, Criterion, and Motive, is working toward.
During the latest episode of Pachter’s YouTube show, Pachter Factor, the analyst shared an anecdote from a conversation with Battlefield Studios general manager Byron Beede:
“I talked to Byron Beede—good dude, former Activision guy, 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. He said it’s gonna take five or six years before they get two in a row, so we’re not gonna get there for a while.”
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Despite Pachter sharing the story like a casual lunchtime chat with a bud, that will be pretty surprising news for longtime Battlefield players. Unlike Call of Duty, which hasn’t missed an annual release for over 20 years, Battlefield fans are used to sticking with a single game for two to three years, or recently more. In fact, EA’s less hurried pace to pump out Battlefields has long been considered a strength of the series.
If Pachter is to be believed, it sounds like that will still be the plan for the immediate future, but EA’s ultimate goal is to mimic Call of Duty’s production pipeline. To investor types, that’s the sort of news that’d make money signs explode out of your ears, but for the casual fan, it sounds more like EA creating more opportunities to sell you the same basic game for 70 new dollars.
If the last few years of delayed, improvised, and awkward Call of Duty games have taught us anything, it’s that more Battlefield will not automatically mean better Battlefield.
I don’t doubt that Pachter’s conversation with Beede happened as he says—PC Gamer reached out for comment from EA and hasn’t heard back—but it’s worth noting that directly after the Battlefield bit, he said some absolutely wild stuff about Call of Duty’s studio structure:
“Call of Duty figured it out—three studios making [games]. And again, they’ve had their troubles: Sledgehammer shut down, Infinity Ward’s been subsumed into Treyarch, and Treyarch has two or three studios now.”
As far as we, and the general public, are aware, Sledgehammer is still alive and kicking and Infinity Ward is very much its own entity. Either Pachter got a little confused for a moment there, or a major shakeup at Call of Duty HQ went unnoticed.