EA - "No other shooter does what Battlefield does"
No other shooter on the market is able to do what Battlefield does, according to EA Labels president Frank Gibeau.
Speaking to IGN, Gibeau explained why Battlefield is in a league of its own as far as the FPS genre is concerned and how it's beneficial for the series.
“There’s no other shooter on the market that does what Battlefield does,” he said. “The mix of vehicles and infantry combat with fully destructible environments in very large levels, nobody matches that. Until they do, we have a unique position, and I think we have a great position."
He also explained how far the Battlefield franchise has come in terms of growth.
"From Bad Company to Bad Company 2 to Battlefield 3, we’ve grown that business from 3 million units to 18 million plus. The quality has gotten better. The technology has gotten better. We’ve done new things with the experience. We don’t feel like we’ve reached a barrier that says, ‘oh, we’re out of ideas to innovate.’ I think the idea that in real time, you knock a skyscraper down right into the middle of the level, it completely changes the whole game. You can imagine. And be rest assured that we have more levels like that.”
Gibeau also stated that although there's a lot of shooters on the market, there's still room for growth of the genre as long as developers keep on innovating.
"We feel very confident that we’ll be able to continue to make better and better Battlefields," he said.
He went to explain how the next-gen will prove frutiful for EA as a company, giving them a lot more options to work with.
“Our idea is to leap ahead using gen 4 and Frostbite 3 to drive the shooter category and grow Battlefield and give fans what they want,” he said. “We feel very confident that we’ll be able to continue to make better and better Battlefields. At the same time, we have a great rotation. We’ve got Battlefield. We’ve got Titanfall. We’ve got Battlefront. We feel pretty good about that mix. They all do something very different. That’s the trick. The more that these things feel the same, that’s when the category starts to fall away. I don’t see that happening yet. I think we’ve got plenty of opportunity in gen 4, with eight times the computing power of the last gen, plus all the new online features, plus a lot of things like SmartGlass integration with Commander mode, where we’re going to continue to give shooter fans and those big franchise buyers bigger and bigger experiences.”
Gibeau also hinted that Battlefield 4 might get a subscription service similar to Battlefield 3's premium service.
“We had a great customer response on the Premium service for Battlefield 3. You can fully expect that we’ll exceed that value offering and that feature set next time. It worked great.”
Battlefield 4 releases on October 29 for PS3, Xbox 360, PC.