EA CEO: Battlefield 4 Launch Was "Unacceptable"

[fix-the-spade]

BF4's sales during its first ten weeks are irrelevant when discussion BF4's current sales.

They are very relevant, sales generally do not go back up once they've gone down, if after ten weeks a game's sales have already tailed into the low thousands then four months after that it's probably close to zero.

BF3's biggest strength was that it just kept selling, until 15 million people had it (mostly on PC too), BF4 most definitely hasn't done that (and neither has Titanfall for that matter). Sadly there aren't any right now sales figures to talk about, so the opening months are all there is to go on.

 

[Barbas]

...And yet, it was accepted...and for a very long time.

On the bright side, though, who gives a shit?! There's a Steam sale on! If you'll excuse me, I'll be buying and playing some actual good games at some ludicrous prices...

Spoiler: Dancing, dancing.

...Oh, and not buying Hardline.

 

[Metalrocks]

too late. im not going to spend any time on this game. its deleted, i have lost my money, but rather lose my money then losing my nerves about the problems this game has. even now its unplayable for me and im not going back to find out of its now playable or not.

even if they have learned form it or not, this should have never been an issue for the pc at least.

 

[Vivi22]

"DICE had a lot of time this time ... Last year was a very unique situation. Not to abdicate responsibility whatsoever - we own it, we are responsible for it and we have worked tirelessly to remedy the situation - but when you are building a game on an unfinished platform with unfinished software, there are some things that can't get done until the very last minute because the platform wasn't ready to get done.

What's their excuse on PC? Or for the PS3 and 360? For that matter, why do they think anyone should buy this excuse for next-gen consoles? The PS4 and XBone architecture isn't anywhere near as unusual and esoteric as the architecture in their predecessors. I might expect some issues due to a lack of time to optimize for those two platforms, but they're similar enough to PC's that there's no excusing the level of ass hattery that players were putting up with. And it certainly doesn't excuse fucking it all up for two consoles they should know well at this point, and the PC where Dice should definitely be able to have their shit together.

Dice may have had about two years to work on the game, but clearly it wasn't enough time. Clearly, when they released, it wasn't ready. They pushed an unfinished product out the door, and I have zero doubt that they did it knowingly, and expecting players to not find out or care until they'd made their money.

Lamenting the poor launch after the fact and claiming they "own up to it," is bullshit. If they wanted to own up to the game not being ready, the time to do that was before it was released unfinished. And the time to fix their mess was before they released ANY DLC for the game.

No one buys the bullshit spewing out of your mouth EA.

 

[Vivi22]

Huh. BF4 sales must be slowing for them to admit this now.

Depending who you ask (NPD, VGcharts etc) BF4's sales in it's first ten weeks are anything from two thirds to one third of what BF3 sold in the same period of time, but all agree that it's a lot less. Not bad considering BF4 was on five platforms to BF3's three.

Selling substantially less isn't bad because it was on more platforms? You have a funny view of what constitutes good. And considering BF4 would have made the majority of the money it will ever make in the first few weeks, never mind the first ten, that's even worse than it seems.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

If the fallout over a shitty Battlefield launch was this bad, I await the titanic mountain of shit to be heaped on them if they fuck up the Star Wars Battlefront 3 release.

 

[Elfgore]

I'll buy Hardline eventually. But not at launch, not again. I bought BF4 four months into release and the game was still a buggy mess. Maybe the PS4 version is better. Anyway, I've already got four games I'm pretty sure will be much stable at launch and actually be different than other games. The game isn't bad, but not worth a full sixty bucks.

 

[gphjr14]

I just borrowed my friends PC copy to test out my new PC and I only had 2 crashes the whole time. I gave up entirely on PS3.

I played BF2 like 2 years after it came out and encounter a gamebreaking bug in like the 2nd to last chapter where during a rail shooting sequence I get instantly shot down by an off screen helicopter. As for BF3 the game kept freezing during the load screen just before you play as the Spestnaz. Oh well...

 

[FalloutJack]

What's that? Do I hear someone going for that triple turkey again? That coveted shit award they claim to hate so much?

Well, you're asking for it, palsy.

 

[gamegod25]

(/sarcasm) ...Nooooooooooooooooooooo, you don't say?!

Better late than never I suppose. Though as they say words are wind, doesn't change the fact that once again EA fucked up.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Selling substantially less isn't bad because it was on more platforms? You have a funny view of what constitutes good. And considering BF4 would have made the majority of the money it will ever make in the first few weeks, never mind the first ten, that's even worse than it seems.

Sarcasm my friend, look it up in a dictionary.

 

[electric method]

It's funny EA/DICE mention they are owning the mistake; that the launch of BF$ was unacceptable, yet 7-8 months after launch the game is still a mess. Ok fine, you admitted that BF4's launch was unacceptable, that you've learned from your mistakes, however pushing focus onto Battlefield: Hardline when you still haven't corrected the problems with BF4 is not owning the mistake. It's a calculated PR move to get people to trust you again so they'll actually buy Battlefield: Hardline.

It's really hard for us to trust you when you cannot even fix the problems in the current Battlefield game, attempt to justify the broken state of BF4 at launch by stating you didn't have access to the hardware/software for the PS4 and Xbone until late in the development cycle and saying it wasn't server side, but client side. What's your excuse going to be when Battlefield: Hardline releases and it is also a train wreck? Trust is earned geniuses. If you want consumers to trust you again you'll have to change your corporate culture, stop trying to land the next C.O.D., play test and debug your games and launch games that actually work on day 1; instead of placing blame elsewhere for 6-9 months then admitting it was your fault all along.

 

[MCerberus]

EA: reminding us that while Ubisoft is far too in love with recycling gameplay aspects and Activision has forgotten what innovation is, the consumers are still in better hands than theirs.

 

[Raioken18]

So the problem was client side...

THEN GET TO KNOW YOUR CLIENTS!

**** this makes me so mad. It's him trying to make excuses for the incompetent handling of their game releases. Not only that but the problems persist even now and the ones they did fix were way way after launch.

I loved the Battlefield series, played the crap out of BFBC2 and BF3, sure for BF3 the launch wasn't perfect but the launcher was a freaking monstrosity. Inviting friends was painful, Battlelog and Origin were both clunky and useless at the time. (I've heard Origin has improved significantly, but I'm still staying away from it).

You have a great franchise that tons of people want to play. Stop being idiots... so much wasted potential...

 

[oldtaku]

I guess we'll see Next Time. This was clearly a business decision to beat Ghosts. Were you not the guy who made the decision? Better be looking harder next time.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

Why couldn't they have said this BEFORE release.
"Hey guys, we know you're excited for BF4, but, well this is kind of embarrassing, but EA have set a really early deadline for a game of this scale, and we're just not going to be able to do it. The game is complete, but it's buggy as shit, and we need a few more months to iron everything out, so that when it does release, it'll play the way it's meant to. We're really sorry about this but please be patient."

If EA/DICE are listening, yes I do need a job.

 

[Aeonknight]

I'm disappointed that this thread got to page 2 without this being referenced.

Spoiler

Turn in your shit buckets.

 

[danielcofour]

Yeah, it's that time of the year, when publishers promise to do better next time, honest!... and they end up not doing what they promised, with added day-one DLC packs.