It’s no secret that Battlefield 4 was not the most beloved game in the first-person shooter franchise’s history. BF4 launched with a laundry list of bugs and technical issues and didn’t really deliver the top notch FPS experience that fans of the previous game had been hoping for. The creators aim to right the ship with the next installment, Battlefield Hardline, by switching things up both in terms of setting and gameplay. Despite the recent infographic released by EA, which bragged about how much destruction beta testers have caused in-game, Hardline seems to have hit enough of a rough patch to fall off schedule.
Battlefield Hardline was announced with an October 21, 2014 launch date attached, but plans have now changed. EA announced today that the game is being delayed to 2015 in order to allow more time to develop an ultimately better product. DICE GM Karl Magnus Troedsson explained the rationale for the delay on the Battlefield Blog…
Although the delay is likely a big disappointment for some fans, it sounds like pushing things back a few months is the right decision. The developers seem to be taking the lessons learned from BF4’s rushed launch to heart and combining that knowledge with the recent beta feedback to shape the rest of Hardline’s development. The title may suffer a bit from missing a holiday season launch and it won’t be quite as fresh in our minds when award season rolls around at the end of 2015, but implementing the changes before it is released, rather than in a series of post-launch patches, will ultimately lead to a higher quality experience.
The delayed version of the game is still slated to launch on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One; but hopefully the additional development time will allow for the creation of a highly polished new-gen experience for players on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The delay was implemented to give the team time to work on multiplayer innovation, single player story depth, and stability improvements; so we hope to see these changes rolled out in a future beta trial later this year.
Do you think the delay is a bad omen for Hardline or that the game will be better thanks to the additional development time? Let us know in the comments.
Battlefield Hardline will launch in 2015 on PC, PS3, Ps4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
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Source: Battlefield Blog
