EA discusses why Battlefield is not annualized

The real reason is that it simply doesn't have the staying power, or the popularity, to remain successful every year. CoD does. It's like the MacDonalds of the video game industry whilst Battlefield is like the Wetherspoons.

BF2 and previous games were fun. I remember spending hours on Battlefield 1942. But BF3 and BF4 are both horrible games imo. Their SP campaign is a joke and their marketed MP really isn't much better. They aren't an annual series....but you couldn't tell just from playing them.

"You also want to be really careful that you don’t destroy the franchise along the way. You've got to make it exciting and different, but at the same time you want to make sure you maintain a great franchise," Jorgensen said.

*IRONY METER EXPLODES*

Why isn't Battlefield annualized?
Because EA is hated enough as it is.

I tell you why it's not annualized: because they cannot even fix serious bugs in a 2-year development window. Simple as that.

I didn't expect BF4 to be released 100% bug and glitch free, but I do expect it to be released in a playable state. Half the time, I can't even make it through the menus and into a multiplayer match without crashing. At least three quarters of the servers I do connect do get disconnected before I even make it through the loading screen. Every single time a commander connects, I've been disconnected. The game constantly corrupts the single player saves, making it impossible for me to complete even the campaign.

I understand that glitches will be ironed out over time. But all I see from Battlefield are advertisements for their upcoming map packs, trying to get me to buy their Premium service. I just... is it too much to ask for a game I can actually play at the time that I buy it?

Sounds like a shot across Activision's bow.

BF3 is somewhat ''fixed'' and BF4 is going through the same beta process. I would hate to see how bad it is, if they annually release these games. That would be on the Bethesda level.

Also, the inclusion of campaign was a waste, honestly. It's only so they can compete with a certain other game.

Gotta love how unfased EA is when it comes to being a hypocrit

How about they take a note from Rockstar or Kojima and actually take 3 or 4 years between major installments. Then maybe we'll get back our beloved Battlefield, instead of this COD competitor they've turned it into.

Sadly BF4 is still prolly the best FPS out right now, even though I dig Killzone.

They say that while releasing broken BF4 that is bugged on every platform...

"You want to be really careful that you don't destroy the franchise," A little too late for that EA.

for me bf4 has come to soon after bf3. i played all bf3 map packs up to end game then like 3 months later bf4 came out that is essentially the same. How am i supposed to be excited about playing bf4.

Iv literally only played like 3 hours on bf4. i have no motivation to load it up

A lot of people are whining about BF4. Battlefield 4 is not a terrible game. Yes, it was released with issues and glitches, but with the size of games now days I am starting to feel it may take a while for game developers and publishers to get use to creating and debugging large games like this. Games on this scale are fairly new...yes large scale games have been around for a while, but not as long as the simple, straight forward, single-path games. Look at the Elder Scrolls series...every time a new one comes out it is plagued with glitches; the Fallout series as well. I think developers are still trying to master the art of creating extremely large games like these. Open world games, games with large scale destruction (like BF) these games are hefty and I think sometimes the gaming community ignores the amount of work, time and skill that goes into creating a game. It isn't just slapping some texture and codes together, running a physics program and sitting back as it all falls together perfectly.

All of these complaints about BF4 being released in a glitchy state is frustrating, games with large scale multiplayer components will probably from now on be released with some significant bugs the devs have never seen. Seriously just get used to it. If you want larger scale you need more time and more money, testing means no other development can be going on which simply isnt economical when a producer is the one signing your checks. Think about it if DICE did 300,000 hours of testing (probable) and 5 million people buy the game in the first day if each one of those 5 million play an hour of multiplayer in the first day thats 5 million hours of testing, in a day... You simply cant test systems of this magnitude completely before release. The beta probably helped but it wasnt a full scale roll out and they did not have enough time between release and the beta to make actual changes, and then test those changes.

Take a software engineering course before talking about how software should never be released in a buggy state because you have no idea how monumental (bordering on impossible) that task is for systems of this size.

Destroying a franchise can be done in several different ways, but apparently some franchises are still profitable despite annual releases. Just like you can turn a profit with a ridiculously expensive game (GTA V), you can turn a profit with a more moderately budgeted one (Minecraft, Witcher series). This means that anything is possible, but not any franchise can succeed with any kind of of business plan.

But...it is....?