Can Battlefield 6 Fix Everything Fans Want?

[Music] Sorry.
So, Battlefield is back. That was the article that was written by these guys in Insider Gaming. I keep asking myself, is this different? Will this time be different? Or is basically EA like Lucy, you know, pulling the football away right when right when Charlie Browns are out ready to kick it? Because every single time that EA comes out with a big release, we think it's going to be different, but they always [ __ ] disappoint. They always disappoint, right? And they do the same goddamn thing. Anthem,
Battlefield, not on like FIFA or FC,
everything non-sports related, just to be clear. Okay, now that was Anthem, Battlefield 2042, Mass Effect drama. Most recently, Dragon Age was a [ __ ] disaster of all epic proportions, but they failed like basically over and over again. And the only real successes that they've had over the last decade that I can think of is Apex and Jedi Fall in

Order, which obviously were both under Vince's watch, right? Vince Sella. So, so anyway, it has been kind of a really tumultuous time. And actually, go back to Star Wars the MMO too as well.
Hey, that still generates money by the way. The Star Wars, I think it's run out of Austin last I checked and that thing actually was cranking money. I think it was
10 million a month.
Dude, it's a great game.
Nice. Nice little private equity business.
Don't get me started on that. Don't get me started on that. I was way too involved with that one. Okay. All right. So, all the signs are positive for Battlefield in my view, right? I'm very bullish right now on Battlefield, particularly for the launch, right? It's a great game. Huge amounts of engagement and hype out there. Like, everyone is talking about this [ __ ] thing, right? The gameplay is amazing. Solid technical performance, which is impressive given their history in terms of releases and technical problems. Amazing visuals. We talked about this ad nauseium, but like the explosions, the secondary explosions, the, you know, environmental like dust and I mean, it's crazy, dude,

is so insane. If you play the game, it's like really really I hate to use the word visceral. The only issue so far has been the fast time to kill, which again, as I've said, but many times is it's leaning more towards Call of Duty than Battlefield of old, right? like they're pushing more and more to that direction which is a faster time to kill just generally but this could be fixable if they choose to which I don't think they will and the big thing here is that Microsoft is really dropping the ball on Call of Duty this year right is relatively clear that they are behind the eightball here and clearly Battlefield is smoking them with the hype right now right now I don't think Call of Duty is going to drop dead dude believe me I don't I think they will come back in the next few months and go big or go home and spend a enormous amount of money in order to promote Call of Duty. But I think Battlefield has gotten the zeitgeist and the interest of the consumer ahead of Call of Duty and I think that puts them in a really good position. And so what I think is they should be able to do like 10 to 15

million units easy, right? I think they probably get north of that which would be great. But the question really is whether or not they have the talent and the plans to actually support the game after launch, right? So can they build a live service that keeps people engaged well after launch? And that's the question that I really need to be answering soon. And the last point I want to make is that like clearly this game is being orchestrated by Byron bead who was of Call of Duty fame as well as Vince Simbella who are both in LA. Part of the reason that the game is successful because it's not being run out of dice. So sorry Philip, but this is what I've been told anyway. This and so like these guys are in charge and they're not [ __ ] living in Sweden, right? And DICE has become like a secondary studio in the game development amongst like three or four other studios. And that's part of the reason because I'm not blaming DICE, but Soderland has basically just [ __ ] destroyed DICE by pulling all these people out, right? So they're not really the DICE of old. So that's part of the reason I think they're seeing a lot more

potential success is because they have lots of more resources building on this, which is what Philip basically suggested last week. But anyway, I've been [ __ ] devastated before. The customer's been burned before, but I'm hoping this time that Lucy will allow Charlie to kick the ball. What do you think, guys?
Does anyone even know Charlie Brown in our I guess we have a bunch of Gen X's in our audience that grew up on on peanuts.
So So here's what I wanted to kind of double click into. I know you love when I say that. This is the story of the industry right now with GTA moving out into next year. This is the game that is kind of filling the question mark of what's going to replace in a sense GTA. Now, of course, it just doesn't replace GTA, but what it is is giving a ton of hype and I'm actually really happy for EA that this is showing so well. And I've actually talked to a number of people in the industry that coming out of this week are like, "Oh [ __ ] we thought we had a clear runway going into Q4 and it might not be as clear as we

thought." especially if you have anything kind of touching the area of a shooter or anything that touches this kind of player and consumer because right now they are sucking like all of the energy out of it. So I pulled a couple of charts, you know, Phil's been showing them. Those charts were from Reese Elliot who is from Alenia Analytics. The first one just talks about 2.7 million wish lists and pre-order revenue of 35 million just on Steam. By the way, the launch is October 10th and so we are quite a while and so this week, this past like two weeks leading up to it have been absolutely crucial for them. And I want to give some credit to marketing because no one ever gives credit to marketing. So they did a kick-ass reveal trailer. The multiplayer gameplay event that was like this 4hour stream that they did, if you didn't watch it, showed incredibly well like famous influencers. So much so that there was a wishlist spike. The first kind of line where the

wish list and everything really starts taking off was at that July 31st multiplayer gameplay event. So plus 62% in one day from that. So the next image shows the just constant planned drum beat of content from the marketing team. This is influencers, it's press, it's trailers, it's these deep dives. All of this going into this beta weekend, the second weekend of August, and then there's another beta coming this weekend. Here's what they've done so well. Dress, just like you said, the game is like doing amazing. It's checking the boxes. The assets are showing the USPS. I completely understand what I'm getting from this game. As you look at any of these assets, the assets preemptively answer everything that you want to know about this game. the constant just drip of content keeping the attention high, the wish lists growing. I don't know if I've ever seen wish lists like up and to the right like we've been seeing. You know,

just going to the YouTube page every day or every other day is another massive trailer or support asset that just keeps that buzz really high. And so I wish Adam was here to talk about this, but Adam and I have been talking about this last couple months, which is your launch is not your launch anymore. early access or these betas are your launch and you have to start acting like it from the beginning from a product standpoint and a marketing standpoint and I think EA is really the first person to do this and do this really really well and the numbers are showing that this strategy is paying off but Chris and Phil I wanted to ask you about cheaters. So, the crazy thing that seems to throw these shooters off is just what goes on with the cheaters. And I and I hate that this is kind of what it comes to. Is there any idea like how cheaters are starting to factor in? I know I saw a post from one of the designers who was like trying to address this fast to kill

thing or any of the cheater stuff that's already coming up because the cheater will figure it out in the first weekend and they did. Any any thought?
Uh, they're screwed. This has been an issue forever and this will never be solved.
Oh god.
But this is the PC thing, right? This is not a console thing as much, right? And the majority of the units will likely be sold on consoles. So it's like a vocal minority people like talking about
the majority of the units will be sold on consoles. I Whoa. Do we do we ah Whoa. Wait, we have a story PC developer. It has huge legs on
but Call of Duty Call of Duty is like 80% console. 80%.
That's fair. When we think about unit sales, I would instead offer like, you know, longtail CCU tends to be primarily from PC
and Battlefield 4 is also an interesting mix. But sorry,
good go ahead.
This stuff is driven by console. My point is that the PC is a cheating is on PC, right? And so like
Yeah. Okay.
And so like
if you want the right if you want experience without cheaters then you go

to console, right? And
got it. So versus COD Crest. Actually, there's this quote from Mike Ybara, who is the Blizzard president, and he said, "Battlefield will boot stomp Call of Duty this year, but the real win here is COD won't be lazy anymore, and we'll all get better FPS games for it." Them is fighting words. We're going to have to do our bet again. And um
Okay. Well, [ __ ] By the way, M Mr. Mikey Barara who works for Prize Picks, which is basically corrupting the youth of America by introducing them to real muddy gambling, right? Dude, you can't be throwing stones at glass houses. Dude, you better look in the mirror before he starts talking trash. You know, there's clearly some bad blood there with Microsoft, you know? No doubt, right? But like Jesus. Anyway, I don't think he's wrong, though. I think this year I think he's dead right though. You know, like I this year they they likely will have an upper hand. It is possible they could outs sell Call of Duty, which is crazy, right? I'm not making that prediction quite yet,

but actually maybe I will make that prediction right now is that they out sell Call of Duty.
Oo.
Um, for launch.
Yeah, I think I'll I could make that bet.
Okay. Yeah, we should in launch like in this year or in launch week like what you want to get specific here.
Let's do for this year. We're not going to have that number though. Yeah,
but I I bet those guys those guys will be able to do it. Reese Elliott and his team will be able to like figure it out.
I bet you so close that it's going to be a flip of the coin. But I I'll say Battlefield's going to win.
Okay.
Not [ __ ] it. We're crushing them.
Yeah.
All right. We're all Battlefield. All right. Let's throw throw some juice behind Battlefield. All right. I love it. Okay. Mishka, do you care?
No. No. I actually I I can't games. I don't like these games. I I remember when that Star Wars one came in for Battlefield and I was like, "This looks exactly like the game I would like to play." And I played it for a bit and it is straight up, you know, Battlefield.

You just get smoked all the time. It's not fun at all. I don't understand. I don't enjoy those place games. I I like slower shooters like wargaming shooters. That's a nice one. Battleships, something slow or robots.
So, one thing I will say is we are going to split out Battlefield into its own cast. So stay tuned for that. There's a lot more coverage here. I think you're completely right, Jen. Like this is dominating coverage and deserves its own period of time. And I think we're going to have a really fun cast for this
with me in I want to do that.
Yeah. Like I Okay, fine. Well, I I actually just basically did my section on the podcast, so
got to have the marketer in there. [Music]