Even Halo Infinite, more precisely its surprise launch, played a role in the poor performance of Battlefield 2042: the statement, according to the well-known and always very reliable insider Tom Henderson, was pronounced by COO (Chief Operating Officer) Laura Miele in the course of an Electronic Arts meeting held this week; and it is causing a lot of discussion in online forums, especially from those who have played it and agree that the problems were (still are, in fact) quite different.
It must be reported that not even Miele has put all the blame on the title of 343 Industries, whose multiplayer sector was released by surprise much earlier than expected. The executive repeated what CEO Andrew Wilson had already said – that the development team had unexpected difficulties due to two years of working from home and the growing obsolescence of the Frostbite Engine, that some serious performance problems only emerged when servers have become populated significantly, and some choices of mechanics and game design have not worked between players.
However, it is true that the executive said that “until the launch of Halo Infinite” the game was going quite well. In the summer beta testing period, player feedback was positive, net of the dutiful bug reports expected in a Beta. Later after the game’s early access launch, critical first impressions had also been good, and DICE had released the day 0 and day one patches.
Miele then noted that just as Halo Infinite was launched, the negative reviews began to arrive from players. The executive’s reasoning is that the new chapter in the Master Chief saga was much more refined and optimized than Battlefield 2042, and the comparison simply put the two games on completely different levels. To put it in context, it is right to indicate some key dates:
- Early Access for BF2042 started on November 12, 2021.
- Multiplayer Beta (labeled Beta just out of formality) was released on November 15, 2021.
- BF2042 was made available to all unconditionally on November 19, 2021.
However, DICE and EA have confirmed that it is not yet time to throw in the towel on Battlefield. The developers have announced a postponement of season 2 to focus on improving the game engine.