How many of you expected that Electronic Arts will take some decision of delaying the launch of Battlefield V after the report of poor Pre-order sales went viral? I am sure not many of you were thinking like this. Today, Electronic Arts and DICE have announced that Battlefield V release date has been pushed forward to November 20. It was previously scheduled to launch on October 19 (between Black Ops IIII (October 12) and Red Dead Redemption II (October 26).
In a blog post on the Electronic Arts website, DICE General Manager Oskar Gabrielson cited multiple reasons for the delay – the first few ones being the improvements needed to the core gameplay, additional time the development team will get to make changes to the final build of the game based on the feedback from the Battlefield Community via Open Beta.
The good news is that the dates for the Battlefield V Open Beta remain the same, September 6. You guys can read the full message of Oskar Gabrielson below.
“Today, we’re announcing that Battlefield V will have a new launch date – November 20, 2018. I wanted to give you a little bit of insight into how we arrived at this new date. Over the summer, we’ve had tens of thousands of players get their hands on the game during our Closed Alphas and at E3 and Gamescom – where we were honored to receive the awards for Best Multiplayer Game at both shows.
You have told us that you are seeing an increased focus on squad play come through, you are also feeling the difference in our revamped player movement and we are getting a lot of positive feedback for our improved weapons handling.
You’ve also spurred us to make some meaningful improvements to the core gameplay experience, including adjusting the gameplay tempo, improving soldier visibility and reducing player friction. You’ll see a lot of these reflected in our Open Beta that starts on September 6.
We believe we have one of the best Battlefield games ever on our hands. A game that will deliver on an emotional journey through the return of unseen single player War Stories, a deep multiplayer experience, Battle Royale, along with our new live service, Tides of War – a journey across multiple theaters of WW2 and designed to keep our community together.
With the Open Beta just around the corner, we are excited about the millions of you who will join us and experience the game. And we fully expect to see even more feedback coming our way.
And that’s why we’re moving our launch date. We’re going to take the time to continue to make some final adjustments to core gameplay and to ensure we really deliver on the potential of Tides of War.
We know moving the launch date means that we all have to wait a little longer. But we’re going to take our time to make sure we get it right. Thank you for your continued passion and support. We can’t wait to see you on the battlefield in just a few days.”
In my opinion, this is the smart move from EA and DICE – they needed to avoid a direct competition of Battlefield V against Black Ops 4 and Red Dead Redemption II. EA has been in this position before as well (Titanfall 2), but at that time they didn’t take the corrective measures and paid a big price.
