In an interview with Eurogamer, Elliot said that the PC version of the game available through Steam is by itself believed to be sitting at around 800,000 pre-orders. This, according to Elliot, has placed Battlefield 6 as representative of “a welcome turnaround for the franchise”, since the pre-order figures are “far above previous installments and other shooters.”

Generally speaking, Elliot believes that pre-orders for Battlefield 6 will pass a million across platforms, since there are still two months until the game is actually out. It ultimately comes down to whether or not EA can capitalise on the momentum seen by the success of the open beta tests it held, especially when it comes to competing with other games coming out around the same time.

“So it depends on whether EA can continue that marketing momentum heading into September,” said Elliot. “There’s a lot going on in September on the shooter front, you’ve got Borderlands 4 coming out, a lot of other games… It’s quite quiet now in terms of releases, so there’s a lot of room for Battlefield to breathe. As we head into the Autumn period there’ll be a lot more going on, but as of right now it’s on track to do extremely well: the best Battlefield has ever done.”

Battlefield 6 saw success with even its first open beta, the positive reception of which even caused EA’s share price to rise. Last week, the success of the first beta had driven EA’s share prices to go up by around 4.7 percent, bringing it up to $176.11 per share. This also had the added effect of raising EA’s market capitalisation up to $41.94 billion. This rise in share price was attributed to a host of things, including the servers being stable and player reception being positive.

“This weekend’s beta test for Battlefield 6 was a success for EA,” said Jeffries analyst James Heaney. “Importantly the server performance was stable, and the player reception screened positive.”

The open betas were also a chance for EA to test out the Javelin Anticheat system for Battlefield 6. The company had confirmed that, during the first open beta, it had managed to prevent 330,000 attempts at cheating and tampering. The company also provided more details about the use of Secure Boot for the PC version of the game.

“On Secure Boot, I want to be clear that Secure Boot is not, and was not intended to be a silver bullet,” reads the post. “Secure Boot is how you’re helping us build up our arsenal. It’s another barrier that helps us make it harder for cheat developers to create cheat programs, and makes it easier for us to detect it when they do.”

For more details about Battlefield 6 and its recent open betas, check out our thoughts.

The same has been confirmed by EA itself, with CEO Andrew Wilson confirming in the company’s recent quarterly earnings briefing that Battlefield 6 – or whatever it is that the next game in the military shooter franchise ends up being called – is going to be formally unveiled sometime this Summer.

“As we look to the future, we’re confident in our ability to execute across a deep pipeline — beginning this summer with the highly anticipated reveal of Battlefield, a pivotal step in delivering on our next generation of blockbuster entertainment,” Wilson said.

What does that mean for when the game will be released? That much remains to be seen, but EA has previously said that it’s going to launch before the end of the ongoing fiscal year, i.e. before April 2026, which means the wait won’t be too long either way.

Meanwhile, plans are also in place for continued extensive playtesting of the title in the lead-up to its release. Read more on that through here.

Kicking things off, the post talks about the developers’ vision for how gunplay and movement should work in Battlefield. The combat, for instance, will be designed to try and make sure that players of varying skill levels can still enjoy the game.

While beginners can still have fun with the core gunplay and movement, the developers are trying to design it in a way where even veterans get rewarded with in-depth movement options and precise weapon feedback when they’re in a gunfight.

“We’re designing the combat experience to ensure players of all skill levels can enjoy our gunplay and movement systems,” the post reads. “Our goal is to offer gameplay that rewards skill with precise weapon feedback and movement options for veterans, while providing an intuitive experience for new players to learn and enjoy.”

Movement and gunplay will both be deeply integrated, while also remaining intuitive and rewarding for players.

The first playtest will be focused on creating “consistent and optimised millisecond-to-millisecond soldier combat,” according to the developers. An example it gave of this was a reduction in the time it takes for bullets to show up on the player’s screen after they pull the trigger. This was done to make combat feel more responsive, and to allow players to better track and hit moving targets.

“We’re optimizing for a 60Hz tick rate, ensuring the game server more frequently updates the positions and actions for all players,” explain the developers. “This results in responsive gameplay across all platforms and inputs. You’ll notice more precise shooting and movement, enhanced damage feedback, and more accurate representation of other players’ positions and combat outcomes.”

The recoil system for different weapon types has also been adjusted to make sure that they all feel unique. When paired with camera shakes, the recoil direction for each weapon will better match the gameplay angle. There will also be a visual change in how weapons stabilise the better a player’s handling of the weapon is.

Movement, on the other hand, has gotten revamped animations. Classic movement options like crouch sprint, combat dive, and landing roll are also being brought back, along with visual indicators to make sure that players know when they can vault over an obstacle or lean around a corner.

The developers have also said that, from its Battlefield Labs playtesters, they are looking for feedback for various aspects of the game, including the look and feel of movement, the pacing of combat, the improvements to weapon aiming and control, the feel of different weapon archetypes, and the weapon balance and how it affects the fun factor.

EA recently started sending out emails to players that had registered for Battlefield Labs to kick off its first playtests. The first wave of these playtests will focus on the PC version of the game, and will take place for around two hours.

https://t.co/5egZX9KCaq

— Battlefield (@Battlefield) March 7, 2025

According to Insider Gaming, the email sent out by EA mentions that the playtest will be done in a “closed test environment.” Players will also be not allowed to stream or record any of the playtest, and discussion has also been prohibited.

Battlefield Labs is a new way that EA will be using to test the next game in the franchise. Overseen by a team composed of DICE, Motive, Ripple Effect and Criterion, Battlefield Labs is a “place for us to test concepts and experiences we’re excited about with you, our players.”

The company has also made it clear that those that register for Battlefield Labs and get selected for various playtests will only be able to do so under NDA. On the other hand, this also allows Battlefield fans to have a greater say in how the game is being developed, and it allows the developers to get feedback on various aspects of the title.

The next Battlefield game is currently in its pre-alpha stages, and will be a prime target for playtests through Battlefield Labs. To kick things off, testing will first revolve around “core combat and destruction.” Future playtests will expand the scope and gather player feedback on more aspects like weapons, vehicles, and gadgets.

It is worth noting that invitations to playtests will be limited to a “few thousand” players that register for Battlefield Labs in Europe and North America. There are, however, plans to expand this audience to more territories as well.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson revealed in February that the next Battlefield game is in development, and is targeting a launch before April 2026. This would fall in line with rumours from last year indicating that the next Battlefield game might be coming out in October 2025.

Considering the fact that the game is still quite early in development, however, it is entirely possible that the launch window will get pushed back if more time is needed by the development team.

Need for Speed developer Criterion is also seemingly taking a big role in the development of the new Battlefield. EA executive Vince Zampella had revealed last month that Criterion is working on the Battlefield game for now.

“The Need for Speed team at Criterion are joining their colleagues working on Battlefield,” he said. “As a company, it was important to us to take the last year to listen to our Need for Speed community and use their feedback to create content for Unbound.”

While concrete details on Battlefield are currently sparse, rumours from back in September 2024 have indicated that the game might feature a campaign set in the late 2020s. The story of the upcoming game is rumoured to revolve around conflicts between a private military group and NATO, and will take place in different locations all over the world.

At the UBS Global Technology Conference, EA’s Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgenson talked about the company’s interest in titles that could then be made into entire franchises. He went on to talk about BioWare’s Anthem and also Motive’s new action game.

Jorgenson stated that Anthem is “looking very exciting” and that the “the team has done an amazing job on it.” It remains to be seen whether BioWare can be redeemed in players’ eyes after the somewhat mixed reception for Mass Effect: Andromeda. It makes sense that EA is trying to pick up on the successes of games such as Destiny and its sequel in pursuing games that blend action with RPG elements.

These games foster longer commitments from players and are certain to be profitable to the company. Motive’s new game is also something Jorgenson is excited about, stating that it “also looks fantastic and exciting”, and he believes that it will have something entirely new and distinctive to offer players. With Assassin’s Creed director Jade Raymond at the helm, it will be interesting to see how this game turns out.

Anthem is expected to release some time in 2018 on the PS4, PC and Xbox One. We’ll have to wait for quite a while to see Motive’s new game which is slated to be released  at some point after 2020.

After the failure of Mass Effect Andromeda, there were a lot of reports and rumors on the ultimate fate of Bioware Montreal, the studio behind its development, as well as on the fate of Mass Effect Andromeda itself. It seems as though those rumors may have had at least a grain of truth to them, because today, EA announced that Bioware Montreal will be merging with Motive Studios, the studio currently working with DICE on the single player campaign of this year’s upcoming StarWars Battlefront 2.

“The teams in EA Worldwide Studios are packed with talent, and more than ever, we’re driving collaboration between studios on key projects. With multiple major projects in development in Montreal, we are merging BioWare Montreal with Motive Studios. This is an ongoing process, but there are many exciting roles and opportunities for everyone on the team,” an EA spokesperson said to Tech Raptor in a statement.

This seems to lend credence to speculation that Bioware Montreal has been scaled back, and that the future of the Mass Effect franchise is in jeopardy after the underwhelming performance of Andromeda– though obviously, it does not act as a confirmation whatsoever. That said, it is very clear now that Andromeda underperformed even by EA’s internal projections. What this means for the future of the franchise is something that remains to be seen.

For all of its success in first person shooters, action RPGs, online titles and much more, Electronic Arts has never really had it’s own Assassin’s Creed style video game series. That’s set to change in the coming years though – CFO Blake Jorgensen recently spoke about as much at the UBS Global Technology Conference.

“We’ve never really operated in the largest genre of gaming, and that’s the action genre. That’s the Assassin’s Creed-style games; more open-world, more single-play versus multiplayer. It’s not been an area that we’ve operated in. We recently hired Jade Raymond, who was behind the Assassin’s Creed franchise for Ubisoft and she will be building an action genre for us through a studio we’re building out in Montreal right now. So a lot of excitement around the action genre.”

Jade Raymond is currently in charge of her own studio Motive and will be working with Visceral Games and former Uncharted writer Amy Hennig on an unannounced Star Wars title. How will it turn out? Stay tuned for more information in the coming months.

Jade Raymond, formerly of Ubisoft has just announced that she has joined the team at Electronic Arts. Raymond will be heading a brand new studio, called Motive and will be based out of Canada. The video game veteran has been a bit adrift since she left Ubisoft last year. She had been the long time producer of that company’s Assassin’s Creed games right up until her departure.

Raymond announced the move in a quick blog post and said that she had joined to company in order to work on something “entirely new.” She added that her new Motive team is going to be working in “close quarters” with the Bioware team that is currently working feverishly to finish up Mass Effect: Andromeda. While the obvious leap in logic would make us guess that she will be in on the second in this rebooted series, that “entirely new” comment seems to hint otherwise.

The first major IP that Raymond and Motive have confirmed will be a second Star Wars game, which is being helmed by Amy Hennig. The game is already in development by Visceral and Raymond will now be overseeing that development company through her role at Motive.  “I’m thrilled that the first big project that we will work on in Montreal will have Amy as Creative Director. An opportunity to work with her and the Visceral team, and to play in the Star Wars universe, is once-in-a-lifetime stuff.”

When Jade Raymond left Ubisoft, she said it was to pursue new opportunities and it appears her new role at Electronic Arts fits that bill.