Battlefield 3 outsold Bad Company 2 by a decent margin and it's season pass and DLC sold very well. The previous CEO at EA pushed for easy money makers with more formulaic gameplay and pushed for a yearly modern military shooter. The success of BF3 led to the decision to make BF4 as they could make BF4 quicker and cheaper since it would share a lot of the same assets of BF3. This past CEO was also the reason Battlefield Hardline was ever a thing. The MoH Warfighter Studio, Danger Close, closed down after Warfighter was a disaster (due to the push of the yearly shooter), so they rebranded some cop drama game into the Battlefield series. We saw how that went.
Things have changed slightly at EA since the new guy moved in. We're seeing a bit less rigorous routine to the release schedule. The delay of Battlefield Hardline was a huge indication that they cannot get away with bad game launches like BF4 and Sim City. They also opened up another studio to just work on Battlefield 4's DLC and vastly improve the Frostbite engine. The new Need for Speed game doesn't even have any DLC despite a situation where microtransaction and/or DLC would fit that game perfectly.
Battlefront is the obvious exception to this give then season pass and the rushed timeline to get that game out. That's mostly due to the Disney contract though. They had to get a big budget Star Wars game out in time for the movie so time was short. The good thing is they've now got a great base and the sequels to Battlefront should be far more full bodied.
As for Bad Company 3, I expect that's going to be the next Battlefield game. I think DICE LA has moved into full development of a new Battlefield game and Battlefield Bad Company 3 is the logical choice. Doing a Battlefield 5 would be redundant. It would be too similar to Battlefield 4. Battlefield 4 has also been tuned for competition better and has a massive amount of content. There is no reason to put out a more competition, large scale focused Battlefield game with BF4 still going strong. Bad Company 3 is the logical next choice as it's going to be more casual and smaller scale. It'll fit into the release schedule nicely.
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