EA Reportedly Blames Surprise Halo Infinite Release for Battlefield 2042's Rough Launch - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 March 2022 / 4,236 Views
Publisher Electronic Arts and developer DICE released the first-person shooter, Battlefield 2042, on November 19. This was going to be three weeks before the launch of Halo Infinite, however, developer 343 Industries dropped the free-to-play multiplayer for Halo Infinite early on November 15 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the series and Xbox.
EA's chief operating officer Laura Miele in the latest internal 'Town Hall' meeting call (reported by Tom Henderson on Xfire) blamed the surprise Halo Infinite multiplayer launch as one of the reasons for the poor launch of Battlefield 2042.
"Following the game's launch, DICE rolled out its Day 1 and Day 0 patches to get the bug count down further," wrote Henderson. "On this, Miele continued and said that Battlefield 2042's launch and patches meant 'the game was stable' and 'the early critical reception was good.'
"However, according to EA, things took a turn, and that turn was clears throat,​ the surprise release of Halo Infinite multiplayer (I wish I was joking)."
He added, "According to Miele, the comparison between both games was not favourable because Halo Infinite was a very polished title whereas Battlefield 2042 contained bugs and wasn't as polished."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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EA: So what, we released a bug riddled game on launch day. That's standard practice for modern games isn't it? Launch in a bug-ridden state and patch it later? We only looked bad because 343 had to go and release a well polished looking Halo multiplayer the same week. Jerks. I mean come on... what are the odds of a game being polished at launch in this day and age... seriously?
WOW! Talk about taking no responsibility. DICE has become incredibly out of touch and incompetent. Or they always have been and I just didn't notice. But this is laughably embarrassing! Not even DICE recently proclaiming that they were working on bringing back "legacy" features that "we wanted" like scoreboards and freaking voice chat was as bad as this! You'd think with how S-tier Respawn has become for EA that DICE would really be stepping up their game. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if EA hands Battlefield off to Respawn or shuts down DICE and creates an entirely new studio for the franchise.
Another thing I don't get. Why aren't video game companies held liable for crap like this??? Shouldn't this be declared false advertising at the very least?!
I hear you, and agree with your underlying premise that blaming Halo is a cop out. But, it is also certainly true that the early Halo launch took away a lot of the attention that Battlefield would have otherwise gotten, regardless of how good or bad the game was.
So, I'm sure it did contribute to the poor sales and would have cost them some launch window sales even if their game was great. Add to that the fact that Battlefield was garbage, 343 launched a good game, in a popular franchise, in a similar genre, and surprised everyone with the timing, and you
have a recipe for bad sales.
Yeah I guess you're right considering Infinite's multiplayer was FTP and BF2042 was full priced. But CoD Vanguard had only been out for a couple weeks at that point that DICE isn't pointing out, and BF did offer early access to the game a week before the official launch. So it's not like players weren't there. Kind of a Titanfall 2 predicament, but that was a stellar game!
I guess the biggest problem is DICE not taking any responsibility for how much of a terrible state the game was at launch, and still is. If BF2042 had launched in a good state, we probably would be talking about that game more than CoD or Halo right now. Because Vanguard is a poor release overall and as great of an experience Infinite is gameplay wise, it released with less maps and game modes than Halo 5 did, and it's in a MAJOR content drought that, at the moment, has no light at the end of the tunnel without a roadmap. Not to mention that BTB was busted for weeks before 343 finally fixed it. Not a great year for major FPS releases lol.
What really pissed me off about that, was knowing that it hurt Respawn's company value, which made it far easier for EA to snap them up when the game they owned didn't sell so well.
This is why I dislike publishers these days, because if EA can do that, so can any other, it makes it easier to snap up little fish using that backstabbing method.
I'm confused as to why they thought saying another game stole their thunder was a good thing.
If they had simply released a well executed battlefield game that the fans wanted the battlefield launch would have been completely fine.
Might as well blame Pokemon for Titanfall 2 and 2042. It has multiplayer, less bugs, sells a lot, releases around the time you do.....clearly Sun and Moon and BDSP is the actual enemy
Why would Nintendo be the direct cause for TF2 when it was because the first game was console exclusive to Xbox, a not so very popular system last gen, coupled with the fact that EA launched BF1 and Acti a new CoD, both were so heavily hyped and marketed and both sold way better than TF2.
Haha BF2042 wasn't as polished. He must not of read any of the reviews.
haha, this is so rich coming from a pub like EA, the very publisher who basically told Respawn to launch Titanfall 2 as pure cannon fodder towards CoD at the time BF1 released, thus fucking over Respawn's sales and company value.
It would be so ironic right about now if EA got bought out some time down the line, because of this big BF fuckup.
don't know how to respond here, this is a huge corporation.
This just in. 343 Devs secretly invaded DICE and added the bugs.
Unbelievable. EA needs to take responsibility of thier own games. They had plenty of time to get it right. I wonder what their excuses were with previous BF launches.
That is what you call narcissism.
They need me to be their new CEO/Emperor since their bullshit isn't up to scratch they should have said, we were busy "helping " 343 make Halo Infinite ,by praying for it to fail, but all that time praying for it's failure while showing some signs of success and highlighting our prayer skills , ended up being thwarted by 343 who rather than following our roadmap and releasing a substandard game instead made the faulty decision to delay and redo Halo and by doing so released a much better game, so that mean spirited decision meant all the time and resources we put into prayer instead of BF was wasted so blame them not us.
I normally buy every Battlefield and Call of Duty game that has a campaign...
So this was never going to make it into my physical collection.
Instead of blaming the competition for making a shit game, they need to learn from their mistakes, grow, improve and do better next time.
And give me a campaign.
Lol.
And I don’t even know what this is about.
Good article!
Man, I don't even have an Xbox and somehow it's putting a smile on my face :D
In other words, 343 saved EA from an even bigger backlash. Meanwhile, BF 2042 is still a broken piece of shit, but EA blames fans for having "brutal expectations" and now proceeds to blame another game.
Perhaps they should consider firing both the DICE development team and their PR department. What a shit show.
No EA. It's because your game sucks.
hahahahahahaha fcking EA should just kill themselves and free respawn entertainment and criterion games jayzus they fucking suck EA
Right, blame others for your mistakes.
Yes sure, it even impacted the launch on PS4 and PS5 right? The blame must always rest somewhere else.
