During their investor call, EA laid out their roadmap for the next year which included a new Battlefield game scheduled for the traditional October release window and a delay for Anthem which pushes it from its 2018 release to 2019.
It will have been two years since Battlefield 1 released when the untitled Battlefield game hits in 2018, giving plenty of the time for the series to breathe. There are no details regarding what the new Battlefield will be, whether it’ll be another period piece or take us back to the modern warfare the series has heavily focused on prior to BF1. There have been rumors that the game could be the long-awaited Battlefield: Bad Company 3 but we’ll likely have to wait until around E3 to learn more.
Perhaps the least surprising thing to come from the investors call is the heavily rumored delay for Anthem. While EA’s CFO Blake Jorgensen claims that the media is trying to create a story by calling this a delay, we’re presenting it as a fact.
“It’s not a delay,” Jorgensen told The Wall Street Journal. “People are trying to create a story.”
The game was announced for fall 2018 at E3 2017 and is now being pushed into 2019, that’s a delay.
Regardless of if you want to call it a delay or not, Bioware’s new competitor to Destiny/The Division won’t hit until 2019 as many of us have been expecting. EA states that part of the reason for the shift in dates is that their plans to release a new Battlefield in Anthem’s previous release window would be counterproductive. Kind of ironic coming from the company that decided to release Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1 in the same month, just mere weeks before the release of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.
EA and Bioware will want to take care with Anthem as they’re investing a lot of time and money into and hope it turns into a big franchise. Bioware can’t risk taking another defeat after the public humiliation that was Mass Effect: Andromeda which more or less put the series on hiatus for the foreseeable future. Staying out of the busiest season for games may be the best way to make sure Anthem stays afloat.
We’ll just have to see what becomes of Anthem and the untitled Battlefield when EA takes the stage at E3 later this summer.
