While there has been a fair bit of optimism regarding the next major entry in the Battlefield franchise, a new report courtesy of Ars Technica indicates that all might not be well with the various development teams working on the title. According to the report, current and former employees from EA have indicated it’s faced a variety of issues, from budgets expanding too much to major disruption.
Internally codenamed Glacier, the next Battlefield is shaping up to have the largest budget of any game in the entire franchise. Back in 2023, it had a targeted budget of over $400 million; setbacks and disruptions to production since then have further ballooned this.
A major source of problems has been the player number targets set by EA’s leadership for Glacier. The report indicates that the company has set a target of 100 million or more players over a set period. This, the report notes, is so that the company can compete with other major shooters in the market – Call of Duty and Fortnite.
“Obviously, Battlefield has never achieved those numbers before,” said one EA employee. “It’s important to understand that over about that same period, [Battlefield 2042] has only gotten 22 million,” said another. Even 2016’s Battlefield 1—the most successful game in the franchise by numbers—had achieved “maybe 30 million plus.”
Developers have also noted that there has been skepticism in the teams regarding the budget, the target player numbers, and how these costs are going to be recouped by EA. One developer said that there might also be a problem of the market not having an appetite for a Battlefield-styled shooter to meet the player numbers without cannibalizing the audiences for other games.
“Among the things that we are predicting is that we won’t have to cannibalize anyone else’s sales,” they said. “That there’s just such an appetite out there for shooters of this kind that we will just naturally be able to get the audience that we need.”
The development troubles faced by Glacier have also been affecting the game’s ability to hit development milestones – referred to internally at EA’s studios as “gates” – in a timely manner. While the first two of these “gates” revolve around pre-production work, including prototyping and testing key technologies, gate three marks full production. Glacier was expected to pass gate 3 in 2023 but ended up getting delayed quite a bit.
“I did not see robust budget, staff plan, feature list, risk planning, et cetera, as we left gate three,” said one employee, questioning whether the project should have been allowed to pass the gate at all. Problems with the project spanned from not having prototypes for key game systems and studio leadership not being in touch with the on-the-ground reality of the project’s development.
“If you don’t have those things fleshed out when you’re leaving pre-pro[duction], you’re just going to be playing catch-up the entire time you’re in production,” said a source, according to the report. For what it’s worth, Glacier cleared gate 3 in May 2025, with all of its features except for its single-player campaign having alpha builds.
The next Battlefield will launch by March 31st, 2026 with a reveal planned this Summer.
