After a month-long delay, and a staggered release with no less than three separate early-access opportunities, Battlefield 5 officially launches today. The release follows around two weeks of early-access launches, with EA Access and Origin Access subscribers first, followed by those who pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition. Now, the game is available for everybody on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
Today’s Battlefield 5 Launch Comes on All Platforms
Battlefield 5 was initially supposed to release a month ago, during October. However, market analysts at the time predicted that the game would fail; one analyst even compared it to Titanfall 2. There was one key reason for this; the initial Battlefield 5 release date put the game’s launch squarely between those of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2. Analysts’ predictions were that these two games would dominate sales. Despite excellent reviews, Titanfall 2 flopped several years ago. The game released in the same launch window as both Call of Duty and Battlefield, which both overshadowed the title.
Whether motivated by the predictions or other factors, DICE chose to delay the launch by one month. In that time, the studio has been very open with fans about what they are working on. The extra time to polish the game has certainly led to improvements. That, combined with the change to its release date, seem to indicate a better sales performance for Battlefield 5. Indeed, early review scores for the game are looking good.
Battlefield 5 is set to introduce a lot of new mechanics and modes to the Battlefield series; Grand Operations, the new Company progression system, and a new micro-transaction system called Company Coin are just some of the new features. The game is bringing back the War Stories single-player campaign from Battlefield 1 as well. There are fewer missions this time around. However, players will find that each one is much longer on average than those from the last game in the series.