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'Yes, It's Gonna Work,' Says Battlefield Hardline Creative Director
EA has had a tough run lately. 2013's Sim City had a disastrous launch. Battlefield 4 took six months to become relatively stable. This year, The Sims 4 and NHL 15 were panned for missing content from the previous versions. 2015 is going to be better though, at least for the Battlefield franchise, according to EA.
Speaking with Game Revolution at the Tokyo Game Show, Battlefield Hardline creative director Ian Milham addressed questions about the game's stability at launch.
"What you're basically asking is, 'Is you're (sic) game going to work?' and the answer is yes, it's gonna work," Milham told Game Revolution. EA launched a Battlefield Hardline beta during E3, following that, the publisher delayed the game from fall 2014 to early 2015.
When we interviewed EA CEO Andrew Wilson at Gamescom, he spoke directly about the reasons behind the Hardline delay. “We brought gamers in earlier than we ever have before,” he told us. “We let them play en masse like we’ve never done before, and ironically, we solved a bunch of the problems from Battlefield 4 around stability and scalability, but what they said was actually, ‘We think this is really cool. But it would be even cooler if you went deeper in the fiction.’ And we gave the team the time. We moved out of the holiday quarter, again, not something traditional for a company like ours. But the feedback from the players has been amazing. If you saw it today, it’s making unbelievable progress.”
Battleifeld Hardline will be out in early 2015 for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PC.
[Source: Game Revolution via MP1st]
Our Take
The statement that a game will work as promised at launch shouldn’t be a headline, but given EA’s spotty track record with online experiences (especially with regard to Battlefield), this made us take notice. What we’ve seen of Hardline looks good so far, and the Hotwire mode especially looks like a step to broaden the experience.
Visceral has a great track record for single-player content, too. If EA can nail the online (as Milham promises), this could be a big step in recapturing consumer trust.
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