DICE has no plans to take the Battlefield series down the same road as Activision’s Call of Duty franchise, which spawns a new game every year regardless of quality.
According to the game’s executive producer Patrick Bach, DICE is under no pressure to churn out a Battlefield game every year.
“The business goals for us are not to release a game every year,” he said. “To us, we need the time to be able to create the next game that consumers will hopefully like.”
He explained to Gamerzines that if the studio worked on releasing a game each year, it would detract from the overall quality of the title, which requires more than twelve months in development.
“If we were to release another big Battlefield title next year, that would mean that we’d have less time than a year to build it, and that would mean that we’d have to have another studio building it for us, which would mean it wouldn’t have that DICE seal of approval, which would mean they’d just have to release a copy of the game we just released. Ugh, no.”
Up until the release of Black Ops, the vast difference in quality between Infinity Ward-developed Call of Duty games and Treyarch’s had been observed.
Bach says that the company will instead focus on releasing expansions and DLCs for its flagship title.
“What we noticed with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was that if you spend enough time on making an expansion pack like Vietnam, there’s enough content to make it feel new and fresh. It’s not only a map pack, it’s weapons and vehicles, and it makes the game feel fresh again.
“I think that’s a more healthy way of expanding on the game experience. It’s not a new game but a twist on your old game, and I think that’s a healthier way of looking at a franchise rather than just trying to cram every single last penny out of it.”
