Battlefield: Hardline is set to miss its original fall release window, instead launching in early 2015, publisher EA has announced on the game’s official website.
The game, the latest iteration in the famed Battlefield series, has been pushed back as a direct result of the feedback gathered from the game’s beta earlier this month.
The beta, announced surprisingly at this year’s E3, ran for the full month of July, providing a considered avenue for developer Visceral Games to gauge opinion on its maiden Battlefield outing.
‘’This feedback also spurred us to start thinking about other possibilities and ways we could push Hardline innovation further and make the game even better. The more we thought about these ideas, the more we knew we had to get them into the game you will all be playing. However, there was only one problem. We would need more time. Time that we didn’t have if we decided to move forward with launching in just a couple of months,’’ read a statement on the game’s official blog.
It’s not all doom and gloom, however, as the publisher has released a list of improvements it hopes to make in the face of the extended development time:
1. Multiplayer Innovation: Coming out of our E3 beta, internal focus tests, and work with our community, we have received a lot of great Multiplayer thinking. We’re going to be adding some new feature ideas direct from the community that will evolve the cops and criminals fantasy into a truly unique Battlefield Multiplayer experience.
2. Single Player Story Depth: In order to ensure our Single Player experience delivers on player expectations, we’re spending more time polishing our core features, as well as adding a few new ones that will support a deeper “crime revenge” story experience.
3. Stability: This has been a focus for our team since day one and we’re going to be using the extra time to continue to optimize the game for a stable launch. We have learned a lot from Battlefield 4, are continuing to learn from our Community Test Environment and will learn more from another Hardline beta. More time allows us to surface issues that the team can attempt to fix prior to launch.
Were you planning on picking up Battlefield: Hardline? Is that still the case? Give us your thoughts in the comments below.