The next Battlefield game is being built by four different developers, EA has revealed.
During EA's Investor Day presentation on Tuesday, president Laura Miele said "four fully resourced studios" are working on "this next iteration of Battlefield." Miele also said EA is "taking more time in the dev cycle" for the next game in the series and has been playtesting it for the past year.
Taking the stage after Miele was Battlefield SVP and GM Byron Beede, who dove into the specifics regarding which studios are developing which parts of the game. Beede said DICE, the creators of the Battlefield series, is "leading the charge on multiplayer," while Need for Speed and Burnout studio Criterion is "driving content and experiences across single player and multiplayer."
"We've also added a powerhouse team from Motive," Beede said, adding that the Battlefront makers have been tasked with the next Battlefield game's single-player campaign. Meanwhile, Ripple Effect, formerly DICE LA and the developer of Battlefield 2042's Portal mode, is "working on a new Battlefield experience fueled by our unique Battlefield DNA that's been testing really well with players."
This isn't the first time we've heard about this "new Battlefield experience," but it has been a long time since it's been mentioned. The last time we heard about it was in December 2021 when it was announced that Respawn head Vince Zampella was taking over the Battlefield franchise. At the time, Zampella said EA was intent on building "a Battlefield universe" with multiple interconnected projects, one of them being that "new Battlefield experience" we're hearing about again now, almost three years later.
It's unclear from the investor presentation how many of those plans are still intact, but EA has been slowly drip-feeding info about the next Battlefield game in the years since. In May, EA CEO Andrew Wilson raised some eyebrows when he said it would be "another tremendous live service" offering, which is certainly A Thing to say after the response to Battlefield 5 and Battlefield 2042.
More recently, Zampella said the next Battlefield game is ditching Specialists and returning to modern day because 3 and 4 were the "pinnacle of Battlefield".
