Battlefield will not be an annual title

With the arrival of Battlefield Hardline due less than a year after the release of Battlefield 4, one might expect the FPS series to get a new edition every year going forward.

EA has said this won’t necessarily be the case, and Hardline was not the start of an “annualisation” of Battlefield.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to annualise Battlefield and that’s the way it’s going to be forever and ever. I understand that some people may look at it that way,” said EA Studios executive vice president Patrick Söderlund.

Söderlund said a “cops and robbers” Battlefield game had been in the works since 2001 – then titled Urban Combat – and a meeting between members of Dice and Visceral three years ago in Spain got the ball rolling on the project.

Söderlund added that the work Dice is undertaking to fix issues with Battlefield 4 will benefit the Hardline multiplayer experience.

“We still have things to make it better. Everything that we’ve fixed with [Battlefield 4] will go into Hardline. Once people get their hands on the netcode patch, which I think is profound, that will take care of a lot of the complaints around Battlefield… and how responsive the game is.”