EA not keen to make Battlefield an annual franchise

During yesterday’s investor call, EA‘s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Blake Jorgensen responded in this way to a question regarding the potential annualisation of the Battlefield franchise:

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

While this isn’t a definitive confirmation that it will never happen, it’s likely the closest we can get from EA. It seems like the company doesn’t believe that releasing Battlefield on a yearly basis would be the right choice, at least for now, as there are some inherent risks in that process. Personally, I couldn’t be happier about this, as I loathe annualisation in all forms; it inevitably cripples the creativity and innovation of any given franchise.

 

What’s your take? Would you appreciate if DICE pushed a new Battlefield every year?