It is good practice for studios to temper expectations, giving players wide release windows to allow plenty of flexibility on the road to putting a big title out.
While keeping things deliberately vague is common,gaming giant Electronic Arts went for an unconventional approach about the newBattlefieldrelease date.
The company revealed its projected release windowduring its Q3 FY2025 earnings call. According to the meeting notes, EA hopes to release the untitledBattlefieldgame between April 2025 and April 2026.
This announcement gave EA a nice clean window to move the release about based on competition moves, and the feedback received during its new community playtesting program.
What is confusing some players isCEO Andrew Wilson’s commentsreleased immediately after.
During a Q&A session, Wilson said “there may be some things happening in the year that may cause us to think differently about our launch timing.”
On the same cautious tone, he advanced thatif the developers “got close to that time frame and believe that this wasn’t going to be a great window”, the company would then “look at what an alternate window might be”.
Playing safe is nothing revolutionary, especially during a meeting with investors, but the exact threats and possibilities that could result in a delay leave some room to the imagination.
Fear Of GTA, Or In-Genre Threats?
Multiple journalists and players attribute EA’s cautious approach to the impending launch ofGrand Theft Auto 6.
Saying those words is slightly surreal, but it looks like the game will come out in the near future (and well beforeStar Citizen’s Squadron 42 campaign).
GTA 6is indeed guaranteed to be the biggest release of 2025 or 2026, but there are other, arguably more pertinent competitorsthat EA may be watching out for.
After putting the franchise on hold since 2019, Ubisoft will bring a newGhost Recontitle sometime in 2026, alleged to be the brand’s biggest tactical shooter yet.
EA & Ubisoft Have One Last Shot To Dethrone Call Of Duty
These major publishers have one last shot at dethroning Activision.
Rumors also point to Activision releasing a new installment to theCall of Duty: Modern Warfarefranchise next year, which poses a much bigger threat toBattlefieldsales than a GTA title could.
Regardless of the impact the Rockstar giant has, beatingCall of Dutyto the punch would go a long way in helpingBattlefieldmake up ground on its historical rival.
Way down the budget metrics, there arepromising titles like'83(from the developers ofRising Storm 2: Vietnam) coming out within the year, andthe highly anticipated release ofARMA 4in 2027.
There is no ‘safe’ release date forBattlefieldto monopolize the attention in the next two years.
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