A new report from Tom Henderson (writing for Xfire) claims that EA management held an internal meeting recently to talk about the problems with Battlefield 2042. At the meeting, EA says that they have "failed to meet the expectations of our players." They then went on to blame factors such as Halo Infinite's launch and COVID for the woes.
At this company-wide meeting, EA management spent over 20 minutes trying to figure out just where everything went wrong for the game's launch. Reportedly, EA's chief studios officer Laura Miele said flatly that "it's really important to acknowledge when we have misses" and that "this is certainly the case with the Battlefield launch." She continues on to say that they have "failed to meet the expectations of our players, and also clearly missed our own expectations."
Miele then went on to list some of the issues that EA's upper management believe were the core issues.
These issues include the Frostbite engine itself. The rather old engine reportedly went through a "massive update" in order to power Battlefield 2042. According to Henderon's own reporting, he says that this engine update alone took over 18 months of development time.
Maybe stop using Frostbite if it's being used as a scapegoat time and time again?
Another issue brought up is the whole working from home issue due to COVID-19. Miele addresses this by stating the following:
"Add up all of this new innovation, all of this ambition for the new project, and then you add a global pandemic halfway into the project, where the game teams had to work from home, we ended up with more new variables in development than we have ever experienced before."
As the meeting continued on, the issues about Battlefield 2042's bugs came up. According to the report, it was conveyed during the meeting that the bug count ratio for 2042 got to "historic levels for a DICE game." Anybody who was around for the launch of Battlefield 4 and other DICE titles probably has some idea as to just how monumental this statement is.
Miele continues on to say that the Day 1 and Day 0 patches for Battlefield 2042 made the game "stable" and the team was happy about the early critical reception. And then a wrench was thrown into the works: Halo Infinite's multiplayer was surprise launched.
According to Miele, the comparison between both games was not favourable because Halo Infinite was a very polished title whereas Battlefield 2042 contained bugs and wasn't as polished.
The game's poor Steam reviews were put down to PC players having a performance cap, which players on Steam found "upsetting".
The game's poor Steam reviews were put down to PC players having a performance cap, which players on Steam found "upsetting".
Miele says that player feedback focused on three particular areas: Bugs and performance, game design and feature choices, and the game not aligning with player expectations.
With regards to bugs and performance, EA says that the company "has historically had bug issues with DICE games at launch, and that the bug count for Battlefield 2042 did fall into the range that they would have expected when compared to other launches." At the time, it was believed that DICE would be able to handle these issues.
DICE did not handle these issues.
Miele notes that player expectations have changed when it comes to live service games. It wasn't the right choice to remain "anchored to the company's standards in comparison to previous DICE games."
Player testing was also referred to, and how the game did not align to player expectations, with Miele saying "Clearly, we didn't go wide enough with different player segments and we certainly didn't go deep enough with the game, so we did not bring players along with us, which is a big miss for the development cycle and process of this game."
Shareholders may not care about Frostbite, but they do care about companies with the skill to maintain current technology to keep up with business demands in the gaming industry. I actually know someone who watches news on a shareholders' meeting and is considering buying shares under the pretense that 5G will develop robots. The premise makes no sense to me, but what he gathered from that meeting is "YOU NEED THE 5G FOR ROBOTS AND WE GOT THE 5G FIGURED OUT." So not necessarily gamers asking for a new engine, but rather shareholders expecting a company who hires competent staff to keep up with technology without licensing from third-parties. So EA is trying to maintain (hah!) some confidence in shareholders.
I also hate the pre-launch reviews of the game. That pissed me off. It allowed EA to get quotes for their launch trailer. Although one of the quotes was hilariously cherry-picked, given the rest of the paragraph was criticism.
...Wow I had more to say than I thought. I didn't think I'd be this pissed off.