Battlefield: Hardline ‘doesn’t mean we need to annualize Battlefield,’ says EA

The release of Battlefield: Hardline later this year will mark the second Battlefield game in two years. For some, that may indicate that EA is beginning a trend of releasing a new Battlefield game every year, similar to what Activision does with its Call of Duty franchise. The process is better known as "annualizing" a franchise, and it's something that EA Studios executive vice president Patrick Söderlund says isn't a goal for the company.

"Karl-Magnus [Troedsson], who runs DICE studios, and Steve Papoutsis, who runs Visceral, basically met in Barcelona almost three years ago and they came to me and said 'Hey, we have an idea,'" Söderlund explained to Polygon about the origins of Battlefield: Hardline. "Actually, the idea of a cops and robbers type Battlefield game has been with us — me and the DICE team — for more than ten years. There are early prototypes from, like, 2000 or 2001 of a game that we called back then Urban Combat. This has been lingering and we've been wanting to do something like this.

"It doesn't necessarily mean that we need to annualize Battlefield and that's the way it's going to be forever and ever," he continued. "I understand that some people may look at it that way but that's what happened.

[Polygon]