EA admits that “surprising” Halo Infinite made Battlefield 2042 look bad and hurt sales

A damning admission from EA executives has revealed that the company knows full well how poor the launch of Battlefield 2042 has been, and has also attributed it to the “surprise release” of Halo: Infinite multiplayer.

Battlefield 2042 has had a rough time since its launch with players quickly turning against the game and even petitioning to ensure everyone gets a full refund because of perceived “false advertising.”

Now, in a rather shocking turn of events, during EA’s internal quarterly call, the company discussed the failings of Battlefield 2042 and their true thoughts of the game behind the scenes.

Battlefield 2042’s has been a “miss” for EA

It takes a lot for a company to call out its own game, especially the magnitude of EA. Yet, they held their hands up and proclaimed that Battlefield 2042 “failed to meet the expectations of our players, and also clearly missed our own expectations.”

The latest company call details come courtesy of an exclusive story by industry insider Tom Henderson, who has also been very vocal about the state of the game. “EA execs spent over 20 minutes discussing what went wrong with the launch, and also how the company sees the future of both Battlefield 2042 and the Battlefield franchise going forward,” Henderson said.

• Read More: Everything we know about Battlefield Mobile

During the call, Laura Miele, EA’s Chief Studios Officer, led the dialogue and claimed several factors hurt the development of the game.

The first one was the Frostbite Engine that needed updating: “All new tech, it was basically a new engine. They went back. The Frostbite version they were on was so old they had to go back and update. So it was basically putting the game on a new engine,” she said.

Working from home as a result of the pandemic was outed as an understandable and contributing factor in the game’s issues, but they also thought the beta testing was a success, despite the negative reception to it.

“Players [were] saying this feels like Battlefield, Battlefield is back, this is my Battlefield, so we had to embolden the team,” Miele said. This was despite the acknowledgment that the game’s bugs and issues hit “historic levels for a DICE game.”

But one of the most remarkable statements from Miele was that EA thought things “took a turn” due to the “the surprise release of Halo: Infinite multiplayer.” This statement clearly confused Henderson as in his article he said he “wish he was joking,” in reference to the Halo admission.

EA admitted that “Halo Infinite was a very polished title whereas Battlefield 2042 contained bugs and wasn’t as polished” and commented that “the bug count for Battlefield 2042 did fall into the range that they would have expected when compared to other launches.”

• Read More: Former Battlefield dev slams Battlefield 2042’s poor design

Henderson concluded by saying: “On a personal note, overall, to me, it seemed that EA was either still grasping as to why Battlefield 2042 failed, or they just didn’t want to share those details with the team.”

There isn’t too much now that can be said about Battlefield 2042 that we don’t already know. EA are confident they can get the game back on track, despite falling numbers, and it will be interesting to see if the delayed Season 1 launch can help matters.