Fair enough, and I agree that there's no denying EA has mismanaged its studios and properties.
But EA doesn't run all of its studios according to one strategy. For example, Respawn was never forced to use Frostbite, so why start now? And, for all its faults, EA does try to respond to criticism, and they're absolute slaves to industry trends--hence two of their bigger multiplayer fps games getting BR variants in a year, a push that Respawn was included in.
Rather than thinking Respawn has extraordinary autonomy for an EA studio, isn't it more likely that the backlash and contracted sales for BF2 and the ticking clock on their underutilized SW exclusivity made them shift strategy again? We know this was a quick announcement/turnaround game.
"Rather than thinking Respawn has extraordinary autonomy for an EA studio, isn't it more likely that the backlash and contracted sales for BF2 and the ticking clock on their underutilized SW exclusivity made them shift strategy again? We know this was a quick announcement/turnaround game. "
This.
I have no clue where this "wouldn't be possible any other way" stuff came from. It ignores every other possibility in favor of a very wild, baseless guess.
EA over this whole generation has changed a lot of how they opperate.
BF4 launched on time, no delay and had so many issues on all the platforms. EA got chewed out because of this.
BF Hardline is delayed and has a very smooth launch.
Mass Effect Andromeda got delayed too
Battlefront 1 by DICE had a season pass, very little content at launch and no real SP like in other FPS titles.
Battlefront 2 by DICE has no season pass, free dlc and all content can be found in game.
Anthem, delayed, all content free and can be found in game.
BFV all content free and can be found in game, like the other simply has optional cosmetics
APEX was down with very interference by EA.
The list goes on. Many can hate the publisher, thats ok we all have opinions, but we can't just ignore that EA didn't just end this generation EXACTLY like how they started it.
This game is running UE4, not Frostbite. So clearly something is changing at the publisher and I see no reason to deny such a thing SOOOOO HARD, that the only guess is the team just BOUGHT is some how free to do anything. That is just pretty wild, out there and favors a bias view to ignore anything positive the publisher has done.
If folks want EA to support SP titles, show them that they are doing something correct with not rushing out games all the time and giving free content post launch and not just only doing MP.