During a recent EA investor call (transcribed by Seeking Alpha), CFO Blake Jorgensen spoke about the annualization of franchises, the challenges facing the publisher regarding the same and how to preserve sales during the tail end of a product’s lifecycle.
Speaking about annualizing Battlefield, Jorgensen stated that, “The challenges are you’ve got to most likely do it out of two studios because it’s hard. It’s a two-year project.
“Battlefield takes us about two years to develop and so you want to make sure that you’re sharing talent across studios, so you keep [the] core talent of the product and the experience for the consumer there. You also want to be really careful that you don’t destroy the franchise along the way. You got to make it exciting and different, but at the same time you want to make sure you maintain a great franchise.
“And Battlefield is a product that doesn’t just sell once, it sells for 24-months associated with not just Battlefield, but all the additional Battlefield Premium activities that the consumer wants. So you’ve got to be careful that you don’t destroy some of that tail that is on the Battlefield product.”
Considering that Battlefield 3 stayed alive thanks to Battlefield Premium and its DLC, even as Call of Duty kept getting refreshed each year, Jorgensen has a fair point. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to see how the series would fare against Call of Duty if it were released on a yearly basis. Would it fall prey to the same criticisms of recycled visuals, maps and gameplay features? Let us know what you think below.