DICE defends Battlefield 4 announcement timing

So, what I don't understand is you "fans" want another 6 or so years wait before the next Battlefield comes out. Won't that make most of the work they have done on Battlefield 4 for nothing, when the next gen consoles come out and they can use a better engine to run/design the games? It makes no sense to feel like they are turning into a 2 year turn out company. What you guys don't understand is the rising cost to make new engines, make the new games, and to do marketing and such. They have to spend nowadays over 20 mil dollars to make all these things. So yeah they want to make enough money to make the next battlefield on the next gen consoles, which will surly raise the cost to way more than 20 mil dollars to make a game. So stop your complaining and enjoy the games you have bought because sooner or later, we will have to pay way more than 60 dollars to buy a copy of a new game.

..If they could make better singleplayer campaign and... a 'AI match' like in BF2/BF1942.. 

BF3 sucks anyway. It tried to be too much like CoD. Bad Company 2 is miles better. Screw BF4, where's BC3!!!!!!

What everyone has to realize is the cost of gaming is going up. It's not all greed. Believe it or not, even major devs and mega huge publishers want their customers to be fans of their work even if it's eveolutionary and not revolutionary. That said, nobody likes change and/or paying more money and gamers are no different. But this is their business model they rely on to make a profit and develop ever more titles which is their mission to achieve ever more success. It's also the reason I personally choose not to play many main$tream blockbuster games unless they're just too good to pass up. Indie FTW. Please don't act like you don't have a choice. No reason getting all anonymous internet nasty with them.

I played BF3 for about half an hour online, way too inferior to DICE's earlier BF games. Battlefield 3 felt rushed and incomplete on release with a quite bad campaign. 

Went back to battlefield bad company 2 recently. A much better game that a high up at dice came out and said he was ashamed of. Perhaps if he had played his own game Battlefield 3 wouldn't have been the disappointment that it was. 

Its not even about the support. Its about the playerbase.

When BF4 comes out, the large majority of "serious" BF players will move to the new game. Therefore, if you want to keep up, play competitively, and find FULL servers, you need to buy the new game too.

"People tend to forget we built three other Battlefield games in between Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 3," Bach said.--- This is the stupidest comment he could have made. There's a massive time difference between Battlefield 2 to Battlefield 3 compared from Battlefield 3 to Battlefield 4. Battlefield 2 was dust long before 3 was even announced (yes, I know people still play it, but hundreds of people is insignificant compared to the scope of players we're addressing). 4 will be released before all of 3's content is even finished.

Why would announcing a sequel be bad?  Are people stupid. (rhetorical)  Seriously.... people complain just to complain.  The last thing I would ever whine about is the game company making a sequel to a game I like.

errrrrrr......I'm wetawded....durrrr

Of course DICE will defend that crap lol

BF3 was a great game until the Dev's got greedy and double dipped asking for another $50 to play the expansion, half of the cost of the original game. (though you don't have to pay. you miss out on a lot of content if you don't) . This is only my opinion but, I refuse to buy another Battlefield installment EVER, because I am almost certain a short while after release they will release an expansion and  dip their greedy little hands in our pockets again.

I hate how modern game support drops so quickly. Like with Assassins Creed Brotherhood/Revelations. I expect to find matches for up to 10 years, not 10 months. What a joke.

For everyone saying this is a sad and stupid, think about it... If next generation consoles come out by the end of 2013 and they make a release date beginning of 2014. Don't you think you'd want to play battlefield on the new consoles? If you are a console player that is. But when next generation consoles come out, the next generation of graphics will hit consoles and PC. So I'm glad they are making another battlefield. If it's with current gen consoles then no, because BF3 is barely playable on consoles.

BF3 is a great game and has many more years of play, specially with the expansions. Why make another BF4? can we guarantee they will not pull the plug on BF3 after buying all the xpacs? I mean most of their games did fall in that category. This is why we complain!!!! BC3 is well needed!!!!

I don't mind this coming out so soon, i think it's actually great.

but what concerns me is " Battlefield 4 " now THAT'S weird.. I mean seriously, don't they know that almost NO players want that? coulden't they go with 2143 or my (and my brothers) favorite idea would be a WWII?

that's sad to me..

what will still make me buy this is different armies. return the BC2 knifing mechanism because in BF3 the knifing is completely useless and I mean completely.. unless you ran out of bullets, switched to your pistol and wasted all your bullets there aswell and someone happened to be close to with and also happened to have less then 50% health, knifing would have been effective.

I want to fight with the Chinese! or fight terrorists with Israel would be even better ;P

but PLEASE don't make this another US vs RU game, I will NOT buy it.

After playing and experiencing something like Mirror's Edge, I think there are a lot of people at DICE who would rather do something other than shooters. Why don't you focus on your BF3 expansions for now and do something new before diving into the fourth instalment?

I thinkt that 90% of people complaining here don't even play BF3 they are just trying to hate EA because is what cool kids do today since ME3, yeah, there is a lot  aspects in BF3 that concerns players, some problems that require hotfixes and new features are needed (VOIP), my great issue is how slow dice is at fixing bugs and other things an official response about that would be nice, anyways the game runs well now but still needs fixing.

This seems like a bit of bellyaching from the gaming community (and God knows that we do bellyache sometimes) but I understand some of the concern after reading the comments.  However, the thing that we often forget is that for us, gaming is a hobby; for them, it's a business.  And if going to a shorter, tighter schedule allows them to make more money, then good for them.  If I were in the military shooter space watching Call of Duty print another half a billion dollars every year, I'd be asking myself "Hm, why aren't we doing that too?"

My guess is that if they spent six years developing a game, they were probably also making sure that the underlying technology (engine and networking code, etc) would support the next few releases in the series.  So I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.  If they screw it up, there will always be plenty of forums for bellyaching down the line.

Get used to this.  It's only gonna get worse....

Patrick Bach on EA's operating principles: "All we want to do is make yacht-loads of money by ruining everyone's favorite developers and destroying their franchises, and still we get terrible reactions from consumers. I think it's just sad."

i dont understand what the problem is, new iterations of franchises go into the works as soon as the last one finishes. so they announced it, big deal, its nowhere near a surprise.

Wasn't BF3 released not even a year ago? Yeah, October 25th, 2011. If I had BF3, I would be a little peeved that they announced it so soon too. 10 months between releasing the game, and announcing it's sequel is kind of too quick, and makes me think of Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty.

Plus, I like many others, just dropped £40.00 on The premium content... Now, with this announcement they effectively dangle the fact that it is totally futile investing in the game I love because now they acknowledge its limited life span... You see this is it with EA... They just cant resist adding insult to injury, can they? If I pay £80 for a game, I want the audience to dictate when that Game is redundant!!! The longevity of which Mod tools might help stimulate? 

 @DTerror01 EXACTLY...

I support dice too.... But I have zero trust for EA. There's is NOTHING wrong with being sceptical, its a preservation instinct and where there is the potential for Bullshit... you should be sceptical towards EA, considering their reputation. Id be more concerned if people embraced this with open arms in blind ignorance rather than actually questioning what they are being told. It is rather early for an announcement, the fact it caused some considerable uproar is actual palpable proof of that, it's not that everyone out there is a moron...F**k you for suggesting that.  

The problem is, the major of the informed gamer don't believe no more on EA.

Glad they finally told that. Its incredible how stupid and blind some "fans" of the game can be. I support DICE, they have never let me down so far. Whenever the playerbase grows, the stupidity amongst them tenfolds.

Sooo...When  is Bad Company 3 coming out?

What is with all the crying? Holy crap. They worked on BF3 for 5+ years. They never said they are going to release this game before all the expansions of BF3 were completed. All they did was announce that there will be a 4th one. They never said they are shutting down servers, they never said they are stopping support. They even have a few more expansions lined up. Calm down people. You are completely out of line and jumping the gun here.

You think they are really going to slack on the expansions of BF3? That will tell the fans a lot. Keep your chin up, and don't pre-judge. I think they are going to try their best with them so that the fans can see they are really putting forth an effort. Give it a chance.

I don't care what anyone thinks or feels because B3 is the best FPS action game ever made. I'm loving the game to death and the MW games are a come and gone experience as far as I'm concerned.

I guess gamers just dont like that companies are reaching for their wallets more often lately. Whole COD serie looks like 1 game that IMO should be much cheaper, maybe BF is taking this course also. Plus this whole DLC business, not to mention day1 DLC...to cut the cake the smallest piece possible.

BF3 is pimpin. DICE don't listen to these people whining about BF3. I am lovig BF3 still and am looking forward to BF4

Make a good zombie game instead Dice. Something where I get to play as the zombie instead of killing them. I want a zombie SIM dammit!!!

To me Battlefield 3 seemed kinda rushed with all the bugs, glitches, and server issues. As much as I am looking forward to BF4, im concerned it'll be even worse in those areas. I know they aren't going yearly, but this still does not seem enough time to make a well rounded game that is worth $60.

Can people stop making CoD and Battlefield?-_- its getting weirder and weirder in the modern FPS....

Exactly, there were three other Battlefield games inbetween 2 and 3, which gave more time for improvements between main games. That's half the reason people are pissed that 4 was announced already.