An Electronic Arts executive partly blames the surprise debut of Halo Infinite multiplayer for the dismal reaction to Battlefield 2042.
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While it once had a great amount of excitement behind it, Battlefield 2042 became one of the biggest disappointments of the year. The game released to generally bad reviews from critics and has been flatly rejected by even the most dedicated Battlefield fans, who have abandoned it to return to earlier titles like Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 5 instead. There are several reasons why people don’t enjoy Battlefield 2042, and it seems EA is laying at least part of the blame on Halo Infinite. In an article by Tom Henderson on Xfire documenting a recent “Town Hall” phone call at EA, chief operational officer Laura Miele addressed many reasons why Battlefield 2042 underperformed. One of the reasons Miele presented was the surprising debut of Halo Infinite multiplayer. Miele stated that Battlefield 2042 was “stable” and that “early critical reception was favourable,” according to the article, but that things took a turn when the game was being compared to Halo Infinite as Halo was more polished and didn’t have nearly as many issues.
Battlefield 2042 Falls To Lowest Steam Player Count Yet.
Besides blaming Battlefield 2042’s bad reception on Halo Infinite, Miele alluded to other reasons why the game has suffered. Miele alluded to the antiquated Frostbite engine, which Henderson estimates took 18 months of development effort to adapt for Battlefield 2042. Miele further noted that development challenges coming from personnel working from home also hindered Battlefield 2042’s potential.
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Developing a triple-
A video game amid a pandemic is an unusual task, and it does make sense if Battlefield 2042 was being held back by its engine. However, others may take issue with EA trying to pin the blame on Halo Infinite for being a better polished game and hence taking some of the shine off Battlefield 2042. The case may be made that EA should never have launched Battlefield 2042 in its current shape at all, as consumers should expect their $70 titles to be polished at launch. EA plans to continue supporting Battlefield 2042 for now, but it’s hard to see how the game can return from this. Fans have created a petition seeking Battlefield 2042 refunds that has over 200,000 signatures at the time of this writing, and the game’s player count continues to drop. It’s possible EA might entice gamers back by making Battlefield 2042 free-to-play, but that would certainly tremendously upset people who paid money for the game at launch. Battlefield 2042’s Specialists and other aspects important to its gameplay seem like they would be very tough to remove, yet these are some of the things that people take most problem with. Other poorly-received games have staged miraculous comebacks over the years, so it’s too early to count Battlefield 2042 out, but it has a very steep hill to climb for sure.