Battlefield 6: 10 Fatal Mistakes DICE Must Avoid

In an earnings call with investors last month EA CEO Andrew Wilson promised that Battlefield 6 would likely hit shelves during the holiday period of 2021.

And as that period approaches on wings as swift as an F-35 with a speed mod, now would be a good time to look at the things fans want from the next Battlefield sequel, and the things they absolutely don't.

Although Battlefield V was generally well received critically, sales were considered a disappointment by EA, with only 7.3 million copies sold by the end of 2018. While this seems like a decent number, expectations for Battlefield V were in the realms of 8 million copies, minimum.

It's clear that Battlefield needs to change course from its recent predecessors if it still wants to compete with the likes of Call of Duty (which itself has gone through something of a reboot), as well as the endless swathe of new Battle Royale shooters that now crowd the market like zombified cash hoovers.

The path to innovation is littered with many potential pitfalls however, and these are things DICE will want to avoid in order to make the next Battlefield one to remember.

Call of Duty has seen something of a resurgence in popularity in the last couple of years, following the release of Modern Warfare back in 2019.

And while it must be tempting for DICE (and EA) to see the dollar signs and want to follow suit, nothing would be more harmful to the Battlefield franchise.

What makes Call of Duty great is not what makes Battlefield great. The same can be said for Destiny, or DOOM, or Overwatch, or any similar game that has you blasting the heads off pixelated army vets and other more colourful characters.

While other shooters certainly offer a degree of strategy and teamwork on massive, open maps, none do it as well as the Battlefield franchise. So it would be criminal for DICE to abandon these core tenets in favour of the smaller, more streamlined gameplay of something like Call of Duty.

Undoubtedly it's tempting to look at the recent successes of adjacent franchises and to try and replicate that formula, but for Battlefield to stay relevant, Battlefield 6 would do well to go back to its roots and highlight what set the franchise apart to begin with.