Yes, you read that right. A new report from Tom Henderson for Xfire has spilled the beans on a recent internal EA Town Hall meeting. Apparently, Battlefield 2042 was discussed at length. And it sounds like EA are doing their best to explain away the game’s negative reception by blaming factors beyond their control.
EA Chief Studios Officer Laura Miele had the unenviable task during the meeting of explaining why the game’s launch flopped. The Xfire report quotes her as saying that Battlefield 2042 had “failed to meet the expectations of our players, and also clearly missed our own expectations.”
Elsewhere during the Town Hall, she pointed to problems with the Frostbite engine. Miele suggested that 18 months had been spent getting it ready and, essentially, upgrading it for BF2042. “All new tech, it was basically a new engine. They went back. The Frostbite version they were on was so old they had to go back and update. So it was basically putting the game on a new engine.”
Henderson reports that EA wheeled out the ever-reliable Covid-19 excuse, too. Miele apparently said the “global pandemic halfway into the project, where the game teams had to work from home” caused “more new variables” than the company had encountered during development before.
Did Halo: Infinite ruin Battlefield 2042’s release?
Surprisingly, EA also reportedly claimed that Halo Infinite‘s surprise multiplayer launch just days before the 2042‘s release caused problems and highlighted the game’s shortcomings. Xfire’s report states that EA felt Halo Infinite was “very polished”. This made 2042 look bad by comparison as it “contained bugs and wasn’t as polished.”
Prior to this, Miele noted that “[Battlefield 2042] was stable” and “the early critical reception was good”. Ultimately, she cited EA’s failure to “go wide enough with different player segments”, adding: “we certainly didn’t go deep enough with the game”.
Season One of BF2042 was recently delayed to early Summer 2022 to allow DICE to fix the game and address feedback.
Do you believe EA’s explanation of Battlefield 2042‘s problems? Do you think it can be saved? Let us know in the comment section below and don’t forget to check out our other gaming articles…
