EA promises that Battlefield Hardline 'will work' at launch

Electronic Arts' Battlefield series has a long, sorry history of games being barely playable at launch due to severe problems such as bugs and network issues. But the company is vowing that the next entry in the franchise, Battlefield Hardline, won't suffer the same fate.

"What you're basically asking is, 'Is you're game [sic] going to work?' and the answer is yes, it's gonna work," said Ian Milham, creative director on Battlefield Hardline, in an interview with Game Revolution during the 2014 Tokyo Game Show.

According to Milham, Visceral started working on the project before Battlefield 4 launched last fall, and some of the studio's work appears in that game and "things [developer EA DICE has] been doing since then.

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"[Battlefield 4 is] in pretty great shape now and all that work is gonna come into what we're doing," said Milham.

It's not an exaggeration to say that Battlefield 4 was broken when it was released last year, and that it remained that way well into 2014. EA and DICE launched the game on five platforms within the space of three weeks — PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One — and Milham acknowledged that Battlefield Hardline may have some hiccups at the start because Visceral is also developing the same five versions of it. However, he pointed to the game's initial beta earlier this year, and a second one that is on the way, as reasons for hope.

"We already had one very successful beta, we're going to have another beta on every platform we ship on. We take shipping a working game pretty seriously. So, yes, the game will work," said Milham.

Battlefield Hardline is set for release in early 2015.