The company declines to confirm any plans about launching new Battlefield games each year

Nov 21, 2013 00:31 GMT  ·  By

Electronic Arts has discussed the possibility of annualizing the Battlefield franchise, emphasizing quite a few challenges that await such a big change, while declining to confirm that something like that might actually happen.

Activision's Call of Duty series sees a new iteration launch every year, and Electronic Arts wanted to rival this extreme pace with its own shooter franchises, in the form of Battlefield and Medal of Honor.

Unfortunately, the Medal of Honor titles failed to live up to expectations and the series has been axed, leaving only the Battlefield series as the established fall shooter for EA.

The company's CFO, Blake Jorgensen, has talked during a recent UBS conference, via SeekingAlpha, about annualizing the Battlefield series and what obstacles arise in such a move.

"The challenges are you've got to most likely do it out of two studios because it's hard," he said. "It's a two-year project."

"Battlefield takes us about two years to develop and so you want to make sure that you're sharing talent across studios, so you keep [the] core talent of the product and the experience for the consumer there. You also want to be really careful that you don't destroy the franchise along the way. You got to make it exciting and different, but at the same time you want to make sure you maintain a great franchise."

Jorgensen also confirmed that Battlefield games are quite special, as they keep players connected via DLC and offers like Premium for a long time.

"And Battlefield is a product that doesn't just sell once," Jorgensen reminded us, "it sells for 24-months associated with not just Battlefield, but all the additional Battlefield Premium activities that the consumer wants. So you've got to be careful that you don't destroy some of that tail that is on the Battlefield product."

He, however, declined to confirm any plans about releasing annual Battlefield games.