Daily Briefing: Thursday 17th February

EA Internally Blame Halo Infinite For Some Of BF2042’s Performance

In a town hall post-mortem of Battlefield 2042 reported by Tom Henderson, EA’s Chief Studios Officer Laura Miele admitted that Battlefield failed to meet the expectations of both the players and EA. They generally believe that the issues were brought on by the massive development time on Frostbite updates and moving BF2042 to a new version of it, the impact from the pandemic, and that Halo Infinite’s release was a very polished experience which made BF2042 look substantially worse by comparison. They are aware of three specific types of issues: bugs and performance, game design and feature selection, and the game not aligning with what Battlefield players want. Laura outlined ways they’re going to target those three issues in future, but Henderson’s takeaway is that either EA have no idea why the game failed, or are unwilling to admit them to the team, especially since every issue with the game has been accurately highlighted by players either during the beta or after its release.

• EA have a lot of work to do with DICE to turn Battlefield around. It’s a miracle the IP still has any weight behind it given the repeated mismanagement for the last decade. The crack leadership squad of Miele, Zampella and their usual compatriots are well-equipped to rescue it, but the clock is running down.

Sean Murray of No Man’s Sky Says “we’re not done yet by a long shot”

Speaking to IGN about the recent No Man’s Sky Sentinel update that overhauled combat, Sean Murray said the team at Hello Games continue to be excited about new things they can add to the game: "I'm amazed that the energy levels are as high now as they've ever been. We tend not to talk about what's on that list publicly but suffice to say we're not done yet by a long shot.”

• No Man’s Sky has all the ambition of Star Citizen, but within much more reasonable-to-develop bounds. Before long, it’s going to be the most expansive game in existence. People who purchased it in that initial hype period are sure to feel at least a little vindicated now, approaching 6 years later.

Ubisoft Has Announced Plans To Release Skull & Bones By April 2023

Ubisoft have announced a number of games they’re releasing between now and April 2023 - Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, a new Mario + Rabbids game, “more exciting” games and, most notably... Skull & Bones! The controversial game that’s reportedly been thrown around various studios, potentially caused trouble with the Singapore government and has been rebooted multiple times will finally see the light of day, but noone except Ubisoft know what it’s going to look like. Or maybe it’ll be delayed again. History would certainly suggest so. In other news, in their earnings call, they highlighted that they will remain independent, but they would “review” any offer to buy them - which is a noted change from their resistance when Vivendi attempted a hostile takeover back in 2015.

• Ubisoft are really struggling to do anything publicly that doesn’t backfire recently, so perhaps being quiet and releasing decent games is a strategy they should try out.