EA’s executive leadership has reportedly set a goal of 100 million players for the upcoming Battlefield game, which “very few” developers believe is achievable.
This comes from a tell-all report from Ars Technica, which explores the game’s many ambitions and problems through information gathered from anonymous sources. In this article, battle royale modes in competitor titles like Call of Duty inspired this optimistic figure.
“Obviously, Battlefield has never achieved those numbers before,” stated one source, while another said: “It’s important to understand that over about that same period, 2042 has only gotten 22 million.”
For reference, Call of Duty Warzone reached 100 million players back in April 2021 per an official blog post. Warzone originally came out in March 2020, so it took roughly a year for the biggest FPS IP out there to hit that figure. In 2018, a Fortnite interview in the Wall Street Journal revealed the game had over 200 million people download and play the industry defining battle royale.
According to the report, those who had worked at DICE for a while were “particularly sceptical”, with one source saying: “nothing in the market research or our quality deliverables indicates that we would be anywhere near that.”
The article also states Battlefield 5’s battle royale mode Firestorm failed to meet expectations, while the aforementioned competitors continued to retain vast playerbases. Nonetheless, it seems that a new attempt at this format is what EA leadership expects will attract much of that 100 million figure.
This new Battlefield is currently undergoing a closed alpha test, though that hasn’t stopped leaks from getting out. Rush mode has been leaked, some single player campaign info, as well as a deluge of info on weapons and a battle royale mode. If this next Battlefield can hit the targets set out by EA executives, it’ll be the most popular Battlefield game ever by a large margin. Whether it actually can, is something else entirely.
