Electronic Arts announced today that it has partnered with Industrial Toys to make a new Battlefield game for mobile devices. The title will launch in 2022.
The big game publisher has seen the results of getting a mobile version right — by watching the success of rival Activision with its 300 million downloads of Call of Duty: Mobile. EA’s DICE studio in Sweden will work with Industrial Toys, which Halo co-creator Alex Seropian and Tim Harris founded. EA bought Industrial Toys in 2018. It’s a growing sign of mobile’s importance to traditional triple-A game publishers as the biggest revenue generator among game platforms. And it shows EA’s own efforts to make big moves into mobile games, as the publisher recently bought Glu for $2.4 billion.
The aim is to bring a skill-based, standalone game to mobile with the Battlefield brand of all-out warfare for smartphones and tablets (again, think about the success Activision has had with Call of Duty: Warzone). In a blog post, DICE general manager Oskar Gabrielson said EA will also have a lot to say about Battlefield’s PC and console version in the coming months.
“I know everyone is wanting more detail about what’s to come for Battlefield this year, and I promise we have a lot to show you in the coming months. We’re putting some things together for when we reveal the next generation of Battlefield, and we can’t wait to show that to you all … but for now, we have a couple of things we wanted to tell you about,” he wrote.
He said EA has the biggest Battlefield development team ever working on the console and PC game for this holiday season. Both Criterion and DICE LA are working on the game, while the DICE team in Gothenburg, Sweden, is taking technology in the game to the next level.
“We’re in daily playtesting mode right now: polishing, balancing, and making the best possible Battlefield game we can,” he said. “I can tell you it is a bold step. It has everything we love about Battlefield — and takes all of it to the next level. Epic scale. All-out military warfare. Crazy, unexpected moments. Game-changing destruction. Massive battles, packed with more players and mayhem than ever before. All brought to life with the power of next-gen consoles and PCs.”
Gabrielson said it has always been the vision to bring Battlefield to more platforms.
“So, after years of prototyping, I’m super-happy to be able to let you know that our friends at Industrial Toys, working closely with all of us here at DICE, are developing a completely new Battlefield game bringing all-out warfare to smartphones and tablets in 2022,” he said.
It’s a completely different game from the one being made for console and PC, designed specifically for the mobile platform. This mobile game is now entering a testing period ahead of launching next year, so expect more details to come, he said.