EA has been discussing the future of its two major first person shooter franchises, revealing that a follow-up to Battlefield 1 wont be released for a couple of years and discussing next years sequel to Star Wars Battlefront.
Speaking at the Nasdaq 35th Investor Program (via Videogamer), EAs chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen said EA wont have another Battlefield back for a couple of years. Next year well have Battlefront, the Star Wars game.
Both franchises are developed primarily by Swedish studio DICE, meaning we could be seeing the start of a pattern for the studio.
DICEs releases typically come with a season pass granting access to a year of additional content following launch. This was the case with 2015s Star Wars Battlefront and this years Battlefield 1. Assuming Star Wars Battlefront 2 will tread a similar path, the next Battlefield game releasing in 2018 makes a lot of sense.
Battlefield 1 has been a big success for EA, critically and, it seems, commercially. With four expansion packs planned for release over the next year, DICE will kept busy in the run-up to Battlefront 2 – which was confirmed earlier this year but has not yet been officially revealed.
We were very excited about how Star Wars [Battlefront] came out last year, said Jorgensen. Its a beautiful game, people loved it. I think if there was criticism they just wanted more. And so were taking that criticism to heart as we build the next game and trying to address any of the issues that they had.
The other thing is, we were really working with the old canvas of Star Wars, the old trilogy, we werent using any of the new materials that came out of [The Force Awakens] because our game actually came out slightly before the movie. Next year well have the opportunity to leverage more of that content from the new movies and we think thatll make the opportunity much larger.
Battlefront 2 will likely coincide with the release of Star Wars: Episode 8, and will use the characters of settings of both that film and last years The Force Awakens.
There seems to be no waning in the excitement around the Star Wars world, he continued. Weve got another movie coming up obviously in a few weeks [prequel spin-off Rogue One] and people are very excited about it, and so were looking forward to bringing to the table next year a much bigger, much more exciting Battlefront for consumers.
Rogue One will be the subject of Star Wars Battlefronts final expansion, which is set for release next week (6 Dec) for season pass holders.
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