No Battlefield Release Each Year, Says DICE

[CptainCrunch]

Anarchy1 posted this link to gamerzines.com:

DICE's Patrick Bach has suggested that the team has no plans to release a new Battlefield game next year, saying that releasing a Battlefield game each year "will eventually kill the franchise".

"The business goals for us are not to release a game every year," said Battlefield 3's Executive Producer talking to GamerZines last week.

"To us, we need the time to be able to create the next game that consumers will hopefully like. If we were to release another big Battlefield title next year, that would mean that we'd have less than a year to build it, and that would mean that we'd have to have another studio building it for us, which would mean it wouldn't have that DICE seal of approval, which would mean they'd just have to release a copy of the game we just released. Ugh, no.

"EA would never force us to release a game every year. I think that would dilute the vision of the franchise, and you will eventually kill the franchise by doing that."

But when asked whether EA could adopt a similar model to Activision, which sees two different studios rotating work on Call of Duty to ensure a new title is released each year, Bach said that while possible "in theory, that would be the day".

"I know for sure that there aren't any discussions about doing that," he continued. "That would be the killing blow for the franchise."

It was suggested in June that EA would alternate its Battlefield and Medal of Honor series' each year, suggesting a new Medal of Honor game may be poised for a 2012 launch.

Bach did suggest, however, that instead of continually pumping out new releases, creating big expansions for Battlefield 3, similar to what the studio did with Battlefield: Bad Company 2's Vietnam expansion, may be the way forward.

So it seems there is no plan to "crank out" games each year by EA or DICE. What are your thoughts on not getting Battlefield 4 in a year or two? This method has been seen by a number of publishers and developers, not just Activision, so does it sometimes work? Could DLC expansions on a core game keep Battlefield 3 alive for years to come?

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[CptainCrunch]

Re: No Battlefield Release Each Year, Says DICE

I have to say that I would be all for the DLC expansion idea with Battlefield 3. It would be a perfect time to try something like that in a longer period since the engine is brand new and the DLC for BC2 worked really well.

I for one get tired of buying the latest game every year or so to play with friends. People move on so quick and CoD has proven that once the next game comes out, DROVES of people move on. I would gladly add BF3:1942, BF3:Vietnam, BF3:2142, BF3:Special Forces to my DLC collection if that meant the core fanbase was still on one game and I could still play with friends on any of those platforms.

And yes, they could all be full blown games again on their own, but do we really need that, especially when the community generally picks 4 or 5 maps out of a game and just plays them over and over?

Anyway, I like the idea and am all for it

Crunch

[Anarchy1]

Re: No Battlefield Release Each Year, Says DICE

I haven't seen a true expansion pack in a long time (well, except for MW2 and MW3). Vietnam was very close to it, but I would prefer an extension of the core game. The problem with BF2's booster packs was that they split the community too often. They need to release one big expansion, like Special Forces and CoD:UO and keep it at that.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: No Battlefield Release Each Year, Says DICE

Yeah, but even Special Forces split up the community, and it was a lot higher priced than $15.

I guess the thing is that there will always need to be seperate servers to run maps people dont have and there are always people that simply will not buy an DLC, but will buy an entirely new game that should have been DLC.

I liked BC2s method because of how fast it was to switch between the games, yet we all had to have the main one.

Crunch

[Anarchy1]

Re: No Battlefield Release Each Year, Says DICE

All expansions will split the community to some extent. Releasing a brand-new game splits the community. Releasing a patch even splits the community to some extent.

If they release a single expansion for $30 6 months to a year after release, a good amount of people will buy it. We know they are going to do something post-release, and I do think people are more likely to buy a single thing than multiple things, even if they are the same price total.

[Roger Smith]

i think special forces was a good expansion pack because it was almost an entirely new game not really a segment imo. armoured fury and euro forces on the other hand were glorified map packs and really didnt bring that much to the table. i personally would like to see three expansions to battlefield 3: vietnam, 1942, and 2142. i think anything they release for battlefield 3 that uses the modern desert war concept should be free and would otherwise "segment the community" but i doubt im going to get my way on this one.

[eradicator8]

I´m all for the idea about DLC.But I do actually not like the way it works right now with BC2 and BC2:V. I know that not everybody have bought V but I think it would be fun to have the maps all mixed up. Otherwise you will end up like with BF2 where there were four different "games" and not until five years after release were you able to join all the maps together in the same game.I actually do not see the problem in being able to mix up the maps. Basically it is not much different from the version you are playing. A lot still play BF2 Vanilla and they can only see/join servers with the same version.Either let people join notifying them that maps unavailable to the person is in rotation and they will be kicked when these maps come up or just do not let the people join these servers.If DICE/EA keep the DLC at a price where everybody can follow I do not think they will see such a big split in the community.

[Minmaster]

Re: No Battlefield Release Each Year, Says DICE

exactly, i'd rather have map packs like the oasis/heavymetal/harvestday one over something like vietnam. that way the server can host any map instead of having it separate and requiring us to manually change over to DLC. and to make it worse, everytime u play vietnam, it wipes out your kit config saves from vanilla.

[The_Eliminator]

I think this is great news. The fact that DICE can see that releasing a new game each year will eventually devalue the franchise is a great step in the right direction.

[Vreki]

Re: No Battlefield Release Each Year, Says DICE

But when asked whether EA could adopt a similar model to Activision, which sees two different studios rotating work on Call of Duty to ensure a new title is released each year, Bach said that while possible "in theory, that would be the day".

A second studio creating Battlefield games? A preposterous idea!
This comment not sponsored by http://easystudios.se/

[Anarchy1]

Re: No Battlefield Release Each Year, Says DICE

A second studio creating Battlefield games? A preposterous idea!
This comment not sponsored by http://easystudios.se/

Not to mention, DICE is a massive studio with almost 300 people. That's more than Treyarch has, and Treyarch has historically worked on two games at a time.

Look at the games DICE has worked on in 2010 and 2011 (from Wiki): Bad Company 2, Battlefield Online, Medal of Honor (multiplayer), Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (collaboration), BC2: Vietnam, Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed (collaboration), Battlefield Play4Free (collaboration), Battlefield 3, and Mass Effect 3.

With their size, they could have their own studio making two different Battlefield games.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: No Battlefield Release Each Year, Says DICE

The problem with doing the dlc like oasis is that those were part of a patch and free. You can't expect anyone to work for free. So the community has to make a choice of purchasing dlc or not. As an individual that's no big deal, but as friends its a problem.

I hope we get some free stuff in bf3, but if anyone thinks its going to be like that is fooling themselves and need to come to the realization that its not going to work that way.

And yes, they did it for bf2 about 5 years after release. That didn't make much difference to the bf2 numbers. They may do that one day for bf3, but $15 vs 3+ years to wait, I could scrounge up the cash in a few weeks.

Crunch

[Vreki]

Re: No Battlefield Release Each Year, Says DICE

The problem with doing the dlc like oasis is that those were part of a patch and free. You can't expect anyone to work for free. So the community has to make a choice of purchasing dlc or not. As an individual that's no big deal, but as friends its a problem.

I hope we get some free stuff in bf3, but if anyone thinks its going to be like that is fooling themselves and need to come to the realization that its not going to work that way.

I think EA/Dice have been working hard on creating constant revenue from their games even after the initial sale.
*Ingame ads in BF2142
*Browserlaunch (with ad potential) and sale of ingame items in BF:H
*Requiring a fee from ranked BF servers.
*Maps sponsored by third parties.

The positive side of this for us customers is that they now have an incentive to keep us playing, instead of moving on two seconds after release.
So "free" content could make business sense for EA.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: No Battlefield Release Each Year, Says DICE

And that's why I hope for some free things, but even back to karkand already has a price. Every battlefield game had some free stuff added. Dice has done great with that, but there are still costs to dlcs with every game.

Crunch

[jimykx]

Re: No Battlefield Release Each Year, Says DICE

DO you believe the first time i looked into the headline i read: "No Battlefield Release this year, says DICE" and i was like