EA partially blames Battlefield 2042 reception on Halo Infinite and COVID - report
Apparently, Halo Infinite's "surprise" multiplayer launch hurt the game.
EA has blamed the disappointing launch of Battlefield 2042 partially on Halo Infinite and COVID-19.
This is according to a report from XFire which states that during an internal town hall-style meeting, EA stated the game didn't perform up to expectations.
The report states that in the meeting, EA chief studios officer Laura Miele and other executives from the company discussed Battlefield 2042's launch woes.
In the meeting, Miele states that Halo Infinite's "surprise" multiplayer launch just four days before the release of Battlefield 2042 hurt the game. This is despite the good "early critical reception" the game received.
COVID-19 also took part of the blame. Because of the work from home environment, the team "ended up with more new variables in development" than it had experienced before the pandemic.
Miele does also admit that despite the innovation and ambition for project, such as moving the game over to a new Frostbite engine, it was "really important to acknowledge" when there were misses, and this was "certainly the case with the Battlefield launch," which "failed to meet the expectations" of players, and "also clearly missed" EA's expectations.
Released on November 19 (or November 12 if you had early access), to focus on a myriad of issues with the game, DICE revealed that the start of Season One had been pushed back to sometime in early summer, rather than the expected March date.
Because of the various issues with the game, players started to leave in droves early on - at least on Steam. But it was also reported that only 43% of Xbox players managed to reach level 15, and only 22% of players reached level 25. Things seemed a little better on PlayStation, where 36% of players unlocked the level 25 Trophy.
Some players were so fed up with the game, a petition was even created asking EA to provide refunds to players no matter the length of time spent with it.
Even David Goldfarb, who served as a lead designer and writer on Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and Battlefield 3, discussed the game’s current state, echoing many of the community’s complaints.
In our review, Sherif said that while he was hopeful that 2042 will be a more interesting Battlefield game at some point, having been through varying degrees of rough launches with the series, he said he may not have the "stamina to perform the dance of chastising DICE for technical problems and missing features, only to turn around and celebrate when the game is inevitably ‘good now, actually’ a year into it."