Battlefield 6 Goes Free-to-Play

All right. So, let's go into Battlefield 6. So, Crush, you put this in here because of the massive new season updates that they're doing.
Massive market.
Oh, right. Well, I mean, this is a huge thing because [laughter] they're actually doing they're releasing, I think, relatively early something to compete directly against the freeto play version of Call of Duty, right? And so, War Zone War Zone, right? and it's called Redsack. Like 46 players with duos and quads. Like supposedly the map is a little bit uninspired, but overall like the go the game play is solid and they've done a good job of replicating that experience. But the I don't know the question that came up a lot was like this seems a little early, [laughter]
right? Like to go free to play. Like they're still in premium mode, right? Like trying to sell [ __ ] copies at full price. Right now the freeto play version is out.
Funny that people think about the console. I think I'm just kind of the same idea that they're just going, you know, full vote and just trying to compete headto head against Call of Duty

and take to build that momentum to take share away from Call of Duty. Of course, Call of Duty at the same time offered another free week.
I saw that with the current version, right, and and again because Call of Duty is coming out so late, like this is what the only thing they have to do.
You know, usually Call of Duty should be coming out next week, right? which would have been perfect to compete against it. But they have another week or so after that gaming.
Yeah, I think it's like the 14th or something short.
Yeah, 14 around there. I just remember that Adam wants to come on the podcast after it launches so he can talk about it with Phil.
But so far so good with Battlefield. I mean, I think they're executing very well. The fact that they got this out so quickly is amazing. And the fact that they haven't any technical challenges. So, we'll see. What are you thinking, Phil, on this? Well, first of all, we need to give a standing ovation to DICE and Vince for shipping a free-to-play battle royale mode in season 1. I mean,

that is an incredible achievement inside of EA. I don't think people understand how hard that is. And launching this in season 1 while they're still having all the marketing push, they still have all the momentum is also brilliant. You remember there was Firestorm in Battlefield 5, which was the last attempt at Battle Royale. And they took some of those mechanics from Firestorm and integrated them into RedSe. So you have that closing circle of fire that explodes all the [ __ ] as it starts to come in using the dice engine. Yeah. Yeah. Really?
Yeah. And it has Yeah, it has that dude.
And it has 100 players, by the way, not just the 46 and and duos and quads. You actually can't do You can't really do solo Q, which is a huge problem.
It has a lot of the respawn mechanics we've seen in War Zone. This is the right strategy, right? There's the thing that I think Vince and team get the most amount of credit for is absolutely zero innovation. I I cannot credit them enough and I'm not being sarcastic. Like they have taken Call of Duty's template and they basically copied it onto Battlefield. And one of the things you talk a lot about, Eric, is this western problem of trying to figure out gameplay

based monetization. And one of the things that they have is they were able to copy blueprints from Call of Duty. This is the one of the ways Call of Duty has kind of snuck in power progression. I wouldn't call it power progression, but gameplay ver. It's horizontal where you buy a pre-progressed weapon. So, in these games, you're playing, you're leveling up your account, you're leveling up a bunch of different things. One of the things you're leveling up is your gun. And as you level up your gun, you unlock attachments. And so, what a blueprint does is it basically just has those attachments already in the weapon. It's basically almost like a little bit of an it's not an XP boost, but it usually kind of pre-progresses you a little bit. And you combine that with a cosmetic. It's a blueprint. They ran the same playbook here in terms of attachments. In fact, they improved it a little bit by having points. Instead of saying, "Oh, there's only like six or seven attachments you can have." Now you have 100 points, which gives you a lot more system design space to say, "Oh, this attachment is a little more powerful. We're going to increase the amount of attachment points it costs." So, they literally just copied that model, which is also cheap to run from a supply side perspective. And not only that, the other thing that they've copied is the black cell pass. So, this

is the one of the ways that Call of Duty has increased their arpoo on their battle pass. rather than it just being, you know, 10 bucks every 2 to 3 months. Hey, let's sell you another $30 up upsell, which has even more content. So, they have copied that and what they're calling Battlefield Pro, which is essentially the Black Cell Pass, but with a little bit more choice. So, what you're able to do in the Black Cell Pass is it's nonlinear and you can choose one of these, we call it tracks, and then once you're done with one of the tracks, you can select one of the other tracks. And so, this is another $30 upsell. So they finally have a monetization model in Battlefield that makes sense. And you know what it is? Control CLV Call of Duty, which is exactly what [laughter] they should they should have done from the beginning. Like this is about getting the franchise back to being a consistent real competitor to Call of Duty. And this was a brilliant way to do it. No innovation. Just go out and run the [ __ ] playbook.
I'm not being sarcastic at all
on monetization, on content, on progression on on RedSack. This is just War Zone. It's it is the right strategy.

Okay. So, for me, I mean, I guess that's super interesting. I thought there was a little bit of in innovation in some of the gameplay and the visuals, but I mean, you're the expert.
Yes, but not at the kind of monetization business model perspective. They they basically did nothing new and interesting. I mean, Battlefield Portal is interesting. We could talk about that, but this is mostly copying the playbook.
Yeah. Yeah, and we talk about this all the time like you know 80% you know controlV [laughter] you know like cut and paste is okay and if there's you know 10 or 20% innovation that's okay too but I did this last week I don't know if you heard me but I talked about some of the innovation in the marketing and the way that they did the betas and the way that they brought the game to life I think has helped to amass excitement and keep people in. And so the one of the things that I loved about this strategy was the ability to maybe retain players ahead of the launch. And so I I don't know if you listen to the the the podcast with it's

called the Dink game business podcast. It was with Embark's Patrick Soderland who you know very well. So Patrick Soderland was the former battlefield leader at EA for 20 years. They also now make the finals and they also now make Cres's favorite arc raiders which is very very interesting and I hope you have that on your shooter radar as something to really look out for. So, one of the things that I thought was super interesting in this podcast that Patrick talked about was when they were dissecting what went wrong with the finals and why that kind of took a dive after launch maybe 3 months later was the lack of the meaningful retentionbased content. And so, you know, I think to us we're like, well, that's a no-brainer. Like, what's your content after you launch? So, back then, you know, a few years ago, like we actually weren't thinking about that. people weren't thinking about like, oh, I have to make sure I've got new modes, new content, as much as they are now. And so, it looks like, you know, in a sense, what we're talking about with the Battlefield team, they've really learned

from those mistakes, right? That's why we're seeing, you know, a freaking battle royale mode in season 1 competing directly against COD and really pushing them because now they're trying to retain players ahead of that, you know, launch, which is smart. The other insight that he said that I thought was super interesting that people should pay attention to is that he went to his content guys and is like at first he's like hey I think we need to be 10x faster to compete with the China based games you know see Marvel rivals or something like that and then he went back a day later and he's like you know what I was wrong we need to be a 100x faster and so how he talked about to my earlier point about AI and our earlier point about AI it sounds like they were using you know machine learning and AI and pipelines to help with making content faster. And I know that you had said earlier, Phil, about like cost efficiency. I think that their AI for speed is something that people should be looking at is how do I do things to feed

the content monster that all players are coming to expect. So, we're looking at a a picture of Arc Raiders. By the way, I also love love love the retro sci-fi7s looking. It kind of reminds me of Concord, to be honest. But I don't know if you saw that on um Battlefield and COD banned the word Arc Raiders from their chat. And so Arc Raiders again, Marketing Brilliance went and did like a post on Twitter that was basically um we're still on track to release like asterisk asterisks because that's what you look like when you get banned in the chat on October 30th. So this game is coming out oh tomorrow we record on Wednesday, October 29th. So So check that out. Well, let me let me ask you, Jen, hold on. I just I I you know, I think, you know, Chris Christopher asked this during the podcast or at least hinted at it. I just get shades of Titanfall between Call of Duty and Battlefield and
would you release this game now?
They talk about that. Yeah. Go ahead, Chris.
No, he's lived through this, right?

Yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
He was solely responsible for the Battlefield like Yeah. Titanfall [ __ ] Call of Duty. And yet he's doing it again. Would you do this, Jen? What would you do with this?
I don't know if I would have. He his answer was, "Well, you know, we've looked at a bunch of things and we believe that we're in it for the long term and we believe, you know, XYZ." I if if you are truly going to be because they are premium I isn't Arc Raiders, doesn't it have a premium component to it?
Yeah. premium plus $40,
you know, and so I I think the challenge for them is all premium games need to launch in Q4 just because that's the momentum you have to get. Q4 is is where you win. And I think they probably as they were developing it didn't realize that Battlefield would be doing as well it's doing. And I think they probably had their sights set on CO.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. He has all the

contacts that knew exactly what was happening with Battlefield. [ __ ] it. I knew Battlefield was going to do well because of how many people were working on it. He certainly did,
you know, like he knew exactly what was happening, right? Like, and like he must have less flexibility in terms of his publishing partner. Is it Nexon? I can't even remember now.
It's Nexon.
Yeah, they gave him money and so he probably was contractually obligated to get it out by a certain time. Like, and like
Yeah, he talked about flexibility. I mean, by the way, I don't think I've heard of a more lovely publisher that he wasn't pushed on any dates. Maybe it's this. And so maybe it's because it's an extraction shooter. It's PVP PVE. Maybe that's why he thinks he can own that segment because his thesis was that they found a way to make the extraction shooter a little bit more accessible, have a a theme and style that was differentiated. It they say it that it's fun. PC Gamer says, "It went from under the radar to on my radar to darn near at the top of my most anticipated games of

2025 thanks to successful tech tests that made the co coincidentially timed marathon alpha look bad. It's currently one of the most wishlisted games on Steam right now. More funny is that the Battlefield and COD betas are centering art raiders. Okay, that actually could be the best gift that they're getting.
Dude, that was the exact [ __ ] argument they made about Titanfall. They're like, "Oh, it's a different market, different audience."
Okay.
I mean, like, how can you make the same mistake twice? Like, I am actually super bullish on Arc Raiders. I think it looks amazing and I think it'll find its thing, but I would have released this like in February, you know? I I wouldn't probably would have waited especially on the so on the marketing side you know as much as you know they're a medium-sized company as much as Nexon is supporting it you do not have the dollars to compete with the number one in two games can you imagine like the marketing spend on COD and Battlefield combined has got to be over a billion dollars and you

know poor little baby arc raiders they're like here's my $100 million marketing budget yay I mean just yeah kudos to them for getting the buzz that they are getting with the community. Uh but you're right like in a perfect world if I was on the team I would have been like March looks really good guys. Well actually remember like what about GTA?
Yeah but that's in May that's in May.
March would give them the window they need. February or March would have given them the window they need.
February or March would have been better. But remember everyone didn't know that GTA was moving. So all of these games, God, would have been in the GTA window. It's so Isn't that crazy to think? [music]
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