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EA partially blames ‘Halo Infinite’ for ‘Battlefield 2042’ downfall

During an internal ‘Town Hall’ meeting call, EA finally admits that they’re disappointed with the launch of Battlefield 2042

Battlefield 2042 was released November 12th, 2020, and similar to Cyberpunk 2077, it hasn’t performed as well as everyone had hoped. After months of user pushback and dwindling player numbers, EA has expressed that they too are not happy with the game.

Thanks to an exclusive story from Tom Henderson, internal conversations around the titles performance have now come to light.

Battlefield 2042 cinematic screenshot
Image: Battlefield 2042 / EA

The ‘Town Hall’ meeting is a quarterly call that takes place for executives to provide company-wide updates and to discuss past, present, and future directions of the company. One of the major talking points for this meeting was Battlefield 2042.

Laura Miele, EA’s Chief Studios Officer, said “it’s really important to acknowledge when we have misses.

They continued, “This is certainly the case with the Battlefield launch, which failed to meet the expectations of our players, and also clearly missed our own expectations.

Battlefield 2042 cinematic screenshot
Image: Battlefield 2042 / EA

One of the main elements that was attributed to the underperformance of Battlefield 2042 was the extended period of time that it took to update the in-game engine.

Miele addressed this point by saying it was “All new tech, it was basically a new engine. They went back. The Frostbite version they were on was so old they had to go back and update. So it was basically putting the game on a new engine.

Battlefield 2042 cinematic screenshot
Image: Battlefield 2042 / EA

Additionally, Miele mentioned that the surprise release of Halo Infinite caught them off guard and that, because it was a very polished title, it was comparably the better gaming experience for players.

Though the game now seems to be in good hands, there is a lot of pressure on what is to come, namely the ‘Season 1’ content set to release in the coming months. At the moment, there is no set release date.

Update (February 21st, 2022): 

Since the articles release by Tom Henderson, EA communications VP, John Reseburg, has released a statement to PC Gamer saying:

These stories are not accurately capturing the discussion and the context, which was an in-depth and very humble internal conversation about the recent Battlefield launch. It was about key learnings and actions we are taking, not blaming external factors.

What is your takeaway from the internal ‘Town Hall’ meeting and the statement released afterwards by EA? Let us know!