Reportedly on course for release next fall, Star Wars Battlefront 2 will be “much bigger” and “much more exciting” than the original licensed shooter, if EA’s Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen is to be believed.
Speaking at the Nasdaq 35th Investor Program (via VideoGamer), Jorgensen confirmed that DICE is prepping Battlefront 2 for next year, and the Swedish dev is “working very hard on making sure that is an extremely deep and engaging offering.” Could that spell the inclusion of a single-player campaign? Who knows.
What we do know is that the release of Star Wars Battlefront 2 will nudge DICE’s Battlefield franchise onto the back-burner. Following the overly successful launch of Battlefield 1 in October, Electronic Arts “won’t have another Battlefield back for a couple of years. Next year we’ll have Battlefront, the Star Wars game.” There are currently four expansion packs planned for BF1 but beyond that, the future of the series is unclear. And though he doesn’t reference it specifically, Jorgensen’s statement all but rules out the chance of a sequel to Battlefield Hardline – or any other spinoff, for that matter.
[zergpaid]Circling back to Battlefront 2, the executive then spoke about the pull of the Star Wars brand, and how DICE’s video game series can piggyback off the hype and excitement swirling around Episode VIII et. al.
“We were very excited about how Star Wars [Battlefront] came out last year. It’s a beautiful game, people loved it. I think if there was criticism they just wanted more. And so we’re taking that criticism to heart as we build the next game and trying to address any of the issues that they had.
“The other thing is, we were really working with the old canvas of Star Wars, the old trilogy, we weren’t using any of the new materials that came out of [Episode 8] because our game actually came out slightly before the movie. Next year we’ll have the opportunity to leverage more of that content from the new movies and we think that’ll make the opportunity much larger.”
As things stand, Star Wars Battlefront 2 is tentatively pegged for release late next year.