Battlefield has been a remarkable success for EA. Even against the mammoth sales of Call of Duty, Battlefield 3 has managed to sell 3.5 million Premium subscriptions and is still ranking on U.S. sales charts.
As the first-person shooter genre becomes increasingly crowded, IGN sat down with EA Labels president Frank Gibeau to discuss how Battlefield stands apart and how it stays competitive.
There’s no other shooter on the market that does what Battlefield does.
“There’s no other shooter on the market that does what Battlefield does,” Gibeau told IGN. “The mix of vehicles and infantry combat with fully destructible environments in very large levels, nobody matches that. Until they do, we have a unique position, and I think we have a great position. From Bad Company to Bad Company 2 to Battlefield 3, we’ve grown that business from 3 million units to 18 million plus. The quality has gotten better. The technology has gotten better. We’ve done new things with the experience. We don’t feel like we’ve reached a barrier that says, ‘oh, we’re out of ideas to innovate.’ I think the idea that in real time, you knock a skyscraper down right into the middle of the level, it completely changes the whole game. You can imagine. And be rest assured that we have more levels like that.”
Gibeau explained that even though there are a ton of shooters on the market (and even multiple from EA), he believes the genre will continue to grow as long as games keep innovating.
We feel very confident that we’ll be able to continue to make better and better Battlefields.
“Our idea is to leap ahead using gen 4 and Frostbite 3 to drive the shooter category and grow Battlefield and give fans what they want,” he said. “We feel very confident that we’ll be able to continue to make better and better Battlefields. At the same time, we have a great rotation. We’ve got Battlefield. We’ve got Titanfall. We’ve got Battlefront. We feel pretty good about that mix. They all do something very different. That’s the trick. The more that these things feel the same, that’s when the category starts to fall away. I don’t see that happening yet. I think we’ve got plenty of opportunity in gen 4, with eight times the computing power of the last gen, plus all the new online features, plus a lot of things like SmartGlass integration with Commander mode, where we’re going to continue to give shooter fans and those big franchise buyers bigger and bigger experiences.”
While EA isn’t ready to announce anything just yet, Gibeau hinted that Battlefield 4 could see a subscription service similar to Battlefield 3’s, telling us “we had a great customer response on the Premium service for Battlefield 3. You can fully expect that we’ll exceed that value offering and that feature set next time. It worked great.”
Battlefield 4 will hit stores on October 29th. For much more, read our hands-on impressions and our interview with DICE executive producer Patrick Bach.
Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following @garfep on Twitter or garfep on IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
No comments:
Post a Comment