Battlefield 6 simply cannot repeat the mistakes of the recent past. The last truly successful entry in the first-person shooter franchise was 2016’s World War One-themed Battlefield 1, which surpassed the combined sales of BF4 and Hardline in its first week. Overall, it sold over 15 million units.
Then there was the World War Two-themed Battlefield V, which got a far more mixed reception and lower sales than Electronic Arts had anticipated. Three years later, DICE released Battlefield 2042. Set in the near future, the game had several technical issues, which the developer partly blamed on having to work remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At launch, it ditched the franchise’s class system in favor of Operators; however, due to fan backlash, the class system was later reinstated.
Ultimately, BF 2042 didn’t resonate with the community, and EA put Respawn’s Vince Zampella in charge of the franchise going forward, with the goal of rethinking the development process for future games from the ground up.
According to Tom Henderson, this includes conducting the largest playtests in the franchise’s history. In a new report published today on Insider Gaming, Henderson says external playtests are happening a lot more frequently than they did in the past, and the team has already collected a massive amount of data. The insider also suggests EA and DICE might be looking to reactivate the Battlefield Community Test Environment, though there are no concrete details at the time.
Battlefield 6 will take place in a modern setting, featuring the most realistic and exciting destruction effects in the industry – or so a job advertisement claimed, anyway. As for the estimated release window, Tom Henderson previously reported that DICE and EA are targeting next Fall, more specifically October. The last two games were released in November, after Call of Duty, whereas Battlefield 1 beat Infinite Warfare to the punch with an October 20 release date. We might see a repeat of that. According to that rumor, the game will also include a free-to-play Battle Royale mode at launch.
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