Electronic Arts and DICE, developer of the Battlefield series, have admitted that the launch of last year's Battlefield 4 had "unacceptable" problems.
When it was released in November, Battlefield a number of significant and often game-breaking bugs. Many players reported the game as unplayable, and DICE has released a variety of patches to try to improve stability.
Now, the developer has acknowledged that it cannot launch games the same way anymore. In an interview with Eurogamer, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said that the problem was because of ambition, and that in the future the publisher and developer will work harder on achieving stability at launch.
"Think about what Battlefield 4 was: 64 player multiplayer, giant maps, 1080p, Levolution that was changing the gameplay design in an emergent way," Wilson stated. "There is a chance there are things you are going to miss through the development cycle. And you end up in a situation we had with Battlefield 4."
However, Wilson continued and admitted that the team should have done more to make sure that the game was ready for launch. "For me, the situation we had was unacceptable" he explains. "For the team it was unacceptable. We have worked tirelessly since then to make sure the gameplay experience got to where it absolutely should have been at launch and we're focused on that and we continue to deliver value to that player base."
In the future, Wilson promised that the final version of projects would be completed earlier so that developers were given more time to test the games. Recently, Wilson also said that the company was completely overhauling its QA system to make sure similar problems do not make it into the final product.
