Battlefield 6, Finally a Real Challenger to Call of Duty?

[music] Big bet coming out. Okay, so Battlefield 6. Has everybody actually watched the trailer? I watched it while Eric was ranting.
Oh, it was a good time to do it.
TLDDR. It's It's just a campaign trailer. There's There's nothing there. So,
there a [ __ ] [laughter]
I have to admit, I was a little bit disappointed because you're right. It It's just a traditional campaign.
It is a cool campaign trailer. looking forward to gameplay trailers. They've al obviously been running Battlefield Labs all along the side here, which has been a ton of play testing, which has gotten some pretty I I think pretty positive feedback coming out of it. So, I think there's a lot of momentum coming um behind this. I think the call outs that I've got here is just this is a [ __ ] massive bet. Uh this is a lot of studios all working together. I think this is Vince pushing as hard as he can. And I think they have the right strategy in terms of rebuilding player trust, focusing on the basics, really showing that they can execute on the core

gameplay. The questions that I've got here is like some of the changes that they've been making, especially on things like movements, bringing it closer towards Call of Duty. It feels like they're bringing it closer towards Call of Duty rather than creating that kind of distinct Battlefield identity. They're still going to retain things obviously like disruptive environments, but the things that I'm watching out for is like they're going to be going up against COD. It's still going to be very much trying to pull that market share. This year feels like a pretty good year to go against Black Ops 7 given this is Treyarch going at it for like the second year in a row, right?
Rumors always saying Black Ops 7 Treyarch has to pull out two games in two years.
Feels like it's the right environment to do it and they're doing the right things in terms of core gameplay. It's just that this is a [ __ ] massive bet and they're going to have to they're this whole potential war zone strategy of having the freetoplay battle royale all coming out at the same launch. There's just a lot of things happening all at once. So, godspeed to the team. I think this is the right bets to make. It's just the size of the bet is my big red flag here.

The only couple things I wanted to say was that Yeah, right. This is a huge bet. I I they must have spent over four or 500 million on this. Like easy, dude. Like I I've heard even numbers that were even higher than that from
people that might know. But
the timing is good in a sense because I think the interest in Call of Duty is in a lull right now. First of all, Call of Duty tech is really far behind. Like it it's starting to get some tech debt in general like in terms of visuals. So I think what this trailer is definitely articulating is that the destructible environments idea that that Battlefield's been kind of known for. And so that was kind of like in the entire trailer was just things like just getting destroyed.
It is good for them to just go like point blank like we are fixing what you're saying is wrong in Call of Duty Black Ops 6, right? So things even like high tick rate servers, really strong server technology,
all that kind of stuff should happen.
Now, of course, the last alpha that was supposedly coming out last week was cancelled because of tech problems on the server [laughter] side. you know, let's let's hope that the alpha and open

beta
they they should not do the alpha if it's going to show bad, right? This is going to be a really critical moment for them to shift the narrative on the game and get people excited. So,
yeah.
So, I'm actually relatively bullish. I I I do think they're doing a great job on the marketing side. I think it's early enough to build up the buzz for I think what's probably in October. Did they actually announce?
Yeah, I I was going to say I also really like the buzz building to this. Um there were some LinkedIn posts like I saw Laura Mielli's post who's the president of EA, you know, saying, "Hey, the trailer is dropping on Thursday. You know, they know how to build Buzz and I think the naming Battlefield 6, awesome. Keep it clean. Like we understand what we're getting. We're getting the next iteration of this franchise." So, as I was researching all of this, there were some leaks as as there will be. So, the release date and pricing were both leaked. So, it is uh Xbox, PlayStation, and PC all on October 10th. Call of Duty

tends to be in that same zone. So, I wonder if they're coming out before. And then, of course, I pulled this for Phil because I know he loves his deluxe editions. Quote, "The game will be available in standard edition as well as Phantom edition. Contrary to some rumors, the Phantom Edition is not a collector's edition. It is rather a deluxe edition, exclusively digital, including additional in-game content. No early access will be granted. Both editions will be available simultaneously on October 10th. So, this is from a leaked report. And then the pricing, I guess it was leaked in Europe. All this is in euros. Uh, so it is $79.99 with the Phantom edition coming in at 29.99. That's kind of weird. So, this should make it a $70ish price point. So, this is interesting timing because I don't know if you saw the the pricing change that Microsoft did on Unknown Worlds 2 where they actually move the price from 80 down to 70. Um, Microsoft came out

and said, "We're focused on bringing players Incredible Worlds to explore and we'll keep our full priced holiday releases including Outer Worlds 2, to $69.99 in line with current market conditions." So there's a question on whether they're going to Microsoft is backing down some of the releases to $70. The way that they wrote this phrase is that you could think that this was going beyond just that and we're keep our full price holiday releases including Outer Worlds 2 to 70. So there is some thought that this could extend to other titles, not just Outer Worlds.
Outer Worlds was never worth 80 bucks to begin with. Hell, it's worth 70 bucks. Yeah, that I think
the first one came out at 50. Dude, I don't I I Microsoft is so over their skis right now. They have no [ __ ] idea what they're doing at that company, right? So, like mixed messages, [ __ ] Anyway, back to back to something that's relevant. It's Battlefield.
I think both of you are wrong about this. I I I get on the face of it that

yeah, there's a lot of capital that's been invested here, but that to me is de-risking this, not increasing the risk here. Like EA's mistake has been underinvesting in Battlefield. Like the house that Bobby built for Call of Duty was built on the three rotating studios that all had three-year dev cycles to go out and make their game. It was brilliant, right? He got yearly releases, but each studio still had three years to make the game. DICE was stretched way, way too thin after Battlefield 4. You remember they had Battlefront 1, Battlefront 2, Mirror's Edge was hanging out the tail end of that, [clears throat] and there was Battlefield 5. EA did a lot of damage to DICE, and they have admitted that. They admitted that to the studio, but they never took corrective action. And apparently corrective action is now taking this franchise away from Dice Stockholm. I will tell you, people here are very demoralized about what's happened. Byron, who's the VP they hired from Call of Duty, is now under Vince. They're running this game out of LA. And I think that's pretty depressing for Sweden. But I think EA took way too long to get this to the right amount of

capital investment to compete. And I think to your point, Eric, this is the right timing, right? Because the one year that Battlefield beat Call of Duty in terms of sales was when Call of Duty was the weakest and Battlefield was the strongest. That was Battlefield 1, which had a novel setting as well. And that was when Advanced Warfare came out and that was one of the weakest Call of Duties of all time. I think there's a real shot that they can pull this off here as well. Like Vince is competent. Like every time, you know, there's an investor call, Andrew Wilson is always trying to like name drop Vince. Investors are always asking about it. Like what, you know, is Vince on the project? What's Vince doing? What's I've heard Vince Vince has been involved. I mean, this is still Byron's game by and large, but I would say the the only other concern I have about this game is whether or not, first of all, there'll be a live service. I don't think Respawn is actually as talented as you might expect at executing against live services. Apex was a [ __ ] show and don't remember, don't forget, they hired Lee Horn to do the monetization cuz they still didn't understand that. And I do wonder if they're going to [ __ ] up the monetization for this one. I haven't heard amazing things. And I've also heard in terms of competency that the single player is an is an absolute

shitow. And I've been surprised that they led with that trailer. I've been curious whether or not this thing was even going to make it to launch and they're going to do the Delta Force. Let's do it afterwards, but that's a pretty bold bet to do the trailer for the single player first.
Well, they always do that though. They always showcase the tech and showcase the visuals and then the multiplayer comes later, which I think is exactly what's happening.
But if if there was slippage risk on the single player, I wouldn't have started with a narrative focused trailer. I would have shuffled the multiplayer one.
Right. Right. I mean, I'm not contesting the idea that the single player is going to be terrible. Like, it's always been terrible. Like there's never been really good. Well, that's not true. Bad Company was good, but like Battlefield's never really nailed the single player stuff, but I don't think people give a [ __ ]
Yeah. And you remember 2042 didn't have that. And I think it part of that is getting back to justifying the box price, especially with a higher entry box price. I think you need this on the back of the box for sure. I think they'll [ __ ] up the live service themselves. But I still think there's been this growing category of large scale warfare FPS games on Steam. Hell at Loose being a really good example, which has a decent TAU. Right now, we're

looking at Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation hovering around 100K. The war for Battlefield in terms of live service is always for the Crusty Germans because that's like half the audience. And a lot of Crusty Germans are like on Steam and they're playing these more realistic military sims. And so, I do wonder as like more of these kind of like double A large scale Battlefield games start to take up share where DICE has kind of fallen down, I have no doubt that Battlefield 6 is going to sell a [ __ ] ton of copies and make a lot of money. And I think it's a real threat to Call of Duty. I just still wonder if they've solved any of the live service problems and I think it's slipping farther and farther away from them.
But if they go to this war zone model and they try to do it day and date, isn't that adding risk to that? I think it will sell well and I think it will show against well against Call of Duty especially. But then does the adding the war zone kicker here now mean that now we've added risk to that upfront big unit cell?
You mean the the battle royale free to play mode? That's unconfirmed.
That's unconfirmed. Let's just say maybe it's a [laughter] thing.

You mean in terms of execution risk or in terms of like reducing the the sales of the box game?
Yeah. Like War Zone didn't do it until what, like 6 months after launch?
I think that's a fair concern. I mean, look, it you still kind of can back into the shareware model where you can still up upsell people on the base skew through that mode, which is what DMZ did, I think, did pretty effectively, right? Like they basically used it as a Call of Duty portal to upsell you not only on just like the most recent entitlement but all the entitlements by six, by five, by four.
Yeah. No, I'm just saying like if you're like, "Hey, that I think it'll sell well, but the live service component is the thing where I'm I'm shining the most risk." They've just upped that risk by saying, "Okay, now we're going to be free to play at launch." Speculating speculating the free to play thing might come later, right? Is that
If it does, then I think that's the right strategy. Especially if
I'm surprised it was day and date.
Yeah. Just to be clear, like back to what Jen was asking. So generally Call of Duty comes out later. So they're intentionally trying to get this thing out before Call of Duty. Like that's pretty obvious, right?
Yep.
And and the beauty behind that is that

they could double dip in the sense they could go for the launch and get as much revenue as possible and then during holiday in November, you can actually reduce price and try to push it there and perhaps maybe release War Zone or something like that. So, I mean, all that [ __ ]
feels like the right strategy is like you launch early in October, you hit Black Friday, you get the sale during when Call of Duty is hitting its hype, you're now a better game than them, and then you've got a free-to-play version coming in January as a big be.
Yeah, exactly. So, like this is all it seems very very contrived and part of the plan. And so, yeah, more power to them. I mean, they know they know what they're doing. Hell, I mean, these guys have been doing this [ __ ] for a long time. Philip, I I actually do that is a really really good good take in the sense that you're right, they made the right investment. They threw everything at this [ __ ] thing finally, right? It's not underinvested at all. So,
yeah. Yep.
The question was has always been is that you have all these teams working simultaneously on one product. Can they actually pull it together in a meaningful way all the different like disparate teams? And it looks like it is

coming together. Maybe
that's a better articulation of the risk which like I haven't played the game yet so I don't know how it feels. I've seen a campaign trailer and I've heard good things from these labs, but let's see the beta. Let's play it. Let's see have they been able to pull all those pieces together.
They're not going to innovate on anything. They're like this is going to be very safe execution. Like even the modern setting is a very safe
exe. I'm just like I want to feel I want to feel these five studios have actually pulled it all together and it's going to be ready for an October launch.
Well, according to the internet, Call of Duty Black Ops 7 is rumored to be releasing on November 14th. So, wow, that's way late. Actually, last year was October. That's really not good. That smells trouble,
I tell you. Dude, that look, I'm not bagging on Microsoft like constantly. I am bagging on them constantly, but like they're off their goddamn game right now, dude. They're like, this is bad news bears if they come out that late, you know?
Yeah, that seems really just ridiculously late from what they normally do. And especially if maybe do

you think that was because of um originally with GTA 6
most years it's late October so like 25th 28th and then Modern Warfare 3 was November 10th Vanguard was November 5th Black Ops Cold War was November 13th
it's within the range but it's always the
Yeah.
Unfortunately the Sledgehammer games that are typically later in November. Yeah.
Yeah. Not when you have a real competitor for once coming out you know.
Yeah. That'll be interesting. Hallelujah.