EA has announced that we won't see another Battlefield game "for a couple of years." Instead, the company is choosing to throw its weight behind production on a new Star Wars Battlefront title set for release in late 2017.
The publisher's chief financial officer, Blake Jorgensen, broke the news at the Nasdaq Investor programme. According to a transcription via Videogamer, the decision to focus on Battlefront centres around EA's desire to address player criticism that the original game was light on content.
"We were really working with the old canvas of Star Wars, the old trilogy," he said. "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."
The decision makes EA the latest publisher that's decided to let some of its biggest franchises lie fallow. Earlier this year Ubisoft announced there would be no new Assassin's Creed game in 2016, and possibly no Far Cry game in 2017.
It's an attempt to end the yearly release cycle that many longstanding titles are bound to, and to ease franchise fatigue both for players and the developers themselves. Dishonored co-director Harvey Smith spoke of this "gamer fatigue" back in 2012, describing it as the problem that arises when marketing influence holds too much sway over the creative process.
Meanwhile, the new Star Wars Battlefront has not yet inked an exact release date into calendars. However, it's expected to arrive during the fall of 2017, which could mean a launch just before Episode VIII blasts onto cinema screens.
Alysia Judge is video host at IGN, and just wants to combine the two: Star Wars Battlefield, where Yoda can lob a grenade at a Darth Maul riding past on horseback. Follow her on Twitter.
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