While there has been plenty of hype and excitement over the upcoming Battlefield 6, the franchise wasn’t always seen so positively. The release of Battlefield 2042 was met with disappointment from just about all fronts. In an interview with Edge (via GamesRadar), Battlefield lead and EA manager Rebecka Coutaz spoke about her experience in joining DICE shortly after the release of Battlefield 2042, and how its negative reception impacted the studio.
Coutaz noted that even DICE itself was quite disappointed with the release of Battlefield 2042, going on to say that the studio wanted to ensure that it doesn’t launch another game in a similar state in the future. “They were disappointed on Battlefield 2042, too,” said Coutaz. “And, across all the studios, they did not want to allow this to happen again.”
She also spoke about how there were differences in expectations when it came to DICE and the community surrounding Battlefield. This led to DICE continuing to work on Battlefield 2042 to ultimately turn the title’s fortunes around to some degree. Coutaz points out that the shooter in its current state is a vastly different game than what it was at launch.
“We had a lot of expectations from the community,” she said, “and the players who have been with us for decades. So we owed some things to them – and, of course, to our teams as well.” At this point, after four years of continuous development and iteration, Coutaz notes that “the game is in a completely different state than when we released it,” and that “we still have a lot of players playing.”
Currently, EA and DICE are celebrating the upcoming release of Battlefield 6 with a series of planned content updates for Battlefield 2042. The plans for these updates – dubbed the Road to Battlefield 6 – were announced last month, and started with a surprise update that brought in a fan-favourite map to the title – Iwo Jima. The map originally made its debut with the first ever Battlefield game – Battlefield 1942. Since then, it has shown up in the series here and there, with the most recent one being from Battlefield 5.
The map has seen some upgrades in its Battlefield 2042 iteration, with the addition of an active volcano that serves as its main spectacle. The map also brings back some of the classic Battlefield feeling, like allowing players to make use of boat landings, bunkers, and trenches along the map. Alongside Iwo Jima, Battlefield 2042 also got some new weapons – the KFS2000 assault rifle and the Lynx sniper rifle. On the vehicle side of things, the game got the A10 Warthog and the SU-25TM Frogfoot.
Further celebrating the October 10 release of Battlefield 6 on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, DICE also released a new battle pass in Battlefield 2042 that allows players to earn rewards that have been inspired from the entire franchise, ranging from Bad Company 2 all the way to the beloved Battlefield 1, and even Battlefield 3, 4 and 5. Portal is also seeing some celebration for the month of September, with rotating new game modes and experiences being featured every 48 hours.
