Taking a cue from Marvel, Electronic Arts mapped out the future of Battlefield for the next few years on a conference call today.

The delayed Battlefield Hardline from Visceral Games will arrive on March 17, while Star Wars: Battlefront is scheduled for "holiday 2015." While Battlefront isn't technically part of the Battlefield franchise, it's coming from DICE and will take the place of Battlefield in EA's portfolio for 2015.

The next major Battlefield won't be released until holiday 2016. That gives DICE a long time to figure out the future of a series requiring something awfully special to make up for Battlefield 4's disastrous launch.

You know what was a pretty good game? Battlefield 2.

@jackhole: a true fact

Theyre dividing battlefront and battlefield 5 between two teams? Still only a year between them. Hope battlefront is rad tho!

Also maybe i havent played enough of it but battlefield 4 seems perfectly fine nowadays.

Good, maybe EA is finally learning that pushing shit out the door that isn't finished yet isn't good business. In my opinion, Battlefield 4 was a great game (and better than BF3) but it's brokenness hurt it so bad. All because they needed to compete with Call of Duty for some stupid reason.

Battlefront holiday 2015, Mirror's Edge spring 2016 (in theory), and Battlefield 5 holiday 2016. That's a pretty full plate for DICE. Hopefully they can pull it off.

So Battlefront becomes the every other year game for Battlefield and the cycle will end up being the same crap. Well, hopefully the can fix the pipeline in the time. Can't hold out much hope for that though.

I'd love to play another Battlefield proper...as long as it is finished, polished, and stable.

As a person whose never played a Battlefield game I find myself oddly excited for this.

I recently returned to Battlefield 4 after having been pretty down on it after it's release due to it's technical problems and lack of controller configuration options. I ended up buying a Premium membership, because that game is genuinely awesome. My favorite game mode (Rush) is still ruined, but there's always something crazy and fun happening in Conquest.

I really hope they consider making another 1943 type of Battlefield game. The current games, especially 4, are so bloated with dumb gadgets and unnecessary complexity that was nowhere to be found in older titles.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 is one of my all-time favorite games. That is all.

Playing BF:BC2, BF3 and BF4 3-4 nights a week I can say BF4 has definitely improved since launch, but while polishing a turd makes it look better, that doesn't mean it's worth comparison. The game was horrendous at launch, to the point that myself and several friends barely played it until Jan/Feb once patches started improving the game. The game has a lot of great improvements over previous entries in the series and interesting mechanics, however I believe it was hampered by being released on 5 systems concurrently, in fact one of the producers even said they had to remove having a pistol when using the riot shield from the Dragon's Teeth DLC because the old consoles would end up 1 MB over on RAM.

I'm honestly surprised they'll have a battlefield game the year after battlefront, since as mentioned in the article it's all DICE developed games, though if they remove the old consoles it would remove 40% of their commitments while also allowing them to expand on some of the mechanics and add stuff that wasn't possible previously. As an example of that, look at the in-game Battlelog on the different console generations, the old systems have 2 screens, friends and missions, while the new ones have 6 screens.

I wish we could still play Battlefield 2 without hacking around, did it ever get fixed?

Yeah, by shutting down the servers.

@sirgregmac said:

DICE absorbed what was EA LA, so I wouldn't be shocked if they're taking the lead on the next Battlefield while DICE proper works on Battlefront.

@hippie_genocide: agreed!

I would rather they put out a higher resolution, nicer-looking version of Bad Company 2 with all the same map than work on Battlefield 5.

That said, I'm still excited for Hardline and Battlefront. Hardline is a total wildcard, but I really liked the beta by the end of it.

Come on DICE, give us Bad Company 2142. This mech smells very clean!

@hippie_genocide: I'm a huge Battlefield fan but I don't get the Bad Company fervor, is it just for the generally more interesting single player stuff? The multiplayer has been phenomenal is basically all of them which is what I care about most. Glad to hear they're going to take their time with the next proper BF game. Looking forward to Final Stand for BF4.

I'm really hoping Visceral can deliver on such a great concept.

Dead Space 2 and 3 are among my all time favorites, but that Hardline beta was just terrible.

Bad Company 3, or bust.

You know something's not right when hearing that a game ISN'T coming soon makes me happy.

Is there anywhere we can read the call in full? I imagine @patrickklepek would have had it but I couldn't find a link in the article. I know they are dry as hell but I'd like to read it.

2143, please.

Add 6 months to a year for them to work out the kinks.

They've been hinting at a 2143 for a while now, first in the BF3 DLC, and now a full-blown BF4 expansion directly and deliberately tying in to it.

I'm hoping it's the game to restore my trust in them as a developer/publisher.

Reading this comment feed makes me want to go dig out my old copy of Bad Company 2. Man that was a great game.

Actually a few of these new releases coming out make me want to dust off and replay old favorites I have laying around.

I am hoping they use whatever it was that made Bad Company 2 so damn good and just place a Star Wars skin over it all.

Hell, for the single player they should just take the Bad Company squad and place them in the Star Wars universe. And without any explanation whatsoever when Sweetwater is arguing with a droid, Haggard is playing pazaak with a ewok and Marlowe is mowing down stormtroopers.

I think dice and EA have made good on fixing up battlefield 4 to the point where its a damn fun game. There are no other multiplayer games like the battlefield series that can offer the kind of experience that these games offer. Lets be honest, bad company 2 was great and battlefield 3 is an amazing game that is still top shelf today. There are some things about BF4 that are way better than any other battlefield. For example, the variety of weapons and the amount of customization. Some of the gadget changes make for better class balance. The latest patch made soldier movement feel a lot better and made smart changes to the grenades. The Rush game mode has been improved so it doesn't suck.

But there are still serious problems with the spawn system in certain game modes. There are more balance issues. There is head glitching and issues with getting stuck on the geometry in certain cases. The hit detection remains slightly less precise and laggy.

BF4 is absolutely amazing in the conquest game mode. The game seems more balanced and made for this mode. People have been so down about battlefield since BF4's rushed launch. If hardline launches in a better state I think it will be an amazing game.

@redravn: I think they totally fucked up battlefield 4 for a solid 6 months and that was way too long.

"Bad Company 'til the day I die"

Too little too late this time around on their part. I know a lot of people railed on it and this may seem like a hop on the bandwagon but, as someone who used to love the series (BF2 being my personal favorite), I can't even consider picking it up anymore.

I genuinely hope they bring it back to it's glory days, I really do, but I can't in good conscious buy them anywhere near release anymore. I'm out of faith in the studio to produce a reliable fun product, pure and simple.

Just make Bad Company 3 next. 2 was such a great game, great characters. The person in this thread who said put those characters in the next battlefront, yes. Put the Bad Company guys in every EA game

Boy, lots of people are pretty hard on BF4 here... but I guess that's warranted if you had the misfortune of playing it on a console.

On PC, it was (and continues to be) a great experience all around. Less cheating than BF2, better overall balance than BC2, more interesting maps/content than BF3.

I've put hundreds of hours into every Battlefield entry so far save 1943, and I truly think it's no exaggeration to say 4 is shaping up to be the best entry so far. I have confidence in DICE, and BF5, for the same reason.

Anytime soon? So, you mean it's out in 2016? Yeah that's totally not "soon".

What? Holiday 2016 isn't soon at all.

@metal_mills said:

Do you know how long it took for them to go from BF2 to BF3? That is long. 2 years is not long.

I miss Battlefield 2, but if there's another Gulf of Oman in Battlefield 5 I'm going to cry.

I just started playing BC2 again, and I think it's just the shear environmental destruction that you can do. BF4 touted the "leveolution" crap but, all in all, it was window dressing for a single map event. Same thing every match.

In BC2, if you see a guy run into a building, you can most likely blow out an entire wall and expose him. I think it boils down to what you prefer. Set Piece or Sandbox.

i think BF5 or maybe BC 3 should be a 2017 game since SW:BF is 2015 fall, in fall 2016 Titanfall 2 should be out

While BF4 is my "go to" Battlefield game, BC2 was great in that it was simple, incredibly balanced, and all maps were top notch. The added variety of the last two titles have led to balancing issues that BC2 just didn't have. I also like to play BC2 when I get sick of getting killed by the airburst.

Anytime soon.................................................................so 2016?

Battle5eld...
B5ttlefield....
Battlfiel5.....
....uh DICE, we're gonna need a few years to figure this one out.

I really like Battlefield but I'm not a Star Wars fan so I am a little disappointed, I just hope they keep updating BF4.

Cause DICE is doing Battlefront in 2015, they don't really get that much time for 5.