EA CFO Talks Battlefield 1, Battlefront 2

EA’s CFO (which stands for Chief Financial Officer, by the by) Blake Jorgenson was talking at the Nasdaq 35th Investor Program Conference in London earlier yesterday, and as you can imagine, most of it was dry, boring, and terribly uninformative. Fortunately, there were people there taking notes, and we got some bombshells about EA’s two biggest properties at the moment: Battlefield, and Battlefront 2.

Regarding Battlefield, Jorgensen was surprisingly blunt, simply stating that Battlefield 1 would be their only Battlefield game for the next few years. While that might seem strange, in today’s sequel-a-year world, it makes sense for a game that’s been as praised as Battlefield 1: it would do them better to treat it as a platform to sell DLC and add-ons for a while, and giving it some time so those add-ons have value, then to try to follow up on it ASAP. After all, there are only so many wars they can depict and get critical acclaim for: no one’s exactly clamoring for a game about the Neapolitan campaigns.

But you don’t have to worry about history when you’re in mother effin’ space, and he was quick to follow up by saying that Star Wars Battlefront 2, which would be coming around next year, would be “much bigger, much more exciting”, and that they were taking criticism to heart when designing the follow-up. And the game certainly did get that: EA even admitted that it had been rushed it so it would launch around the same time as Episode Seven.

So, as far as EA’s concerned, everything is looking pretty peachy keen. Still, before we start uncorking the campaign, we have to see how Battlefront 2 does. EA did ultimately sell 14 million copies of the first game, so they hit their sales mark, but if they can do that again… well…

We’ll find out, right?