Long blasted for lack of depth and more specifically for the lack of a single-player campaign, Star Wars: Battlefront has done very well nonetheless. DICE, the creators of the game, have always maintained that they had aimed at making a multi-player game, one that would allow players to relive the iconic battles of the classic Star Wars movies. Still something was definitely amiss, and the other day, EA’s Patrick Soderlund has finally come forth and confessed. He admitted that the decision to release the game without a single-player campaign had been a conscious one, driven by marketing reasons. More specifically, the team wanted to have the game released early, to take advantage of the Star Wars buzz generated by the release of The Force Awakens. In that respect, they have indeed accomplished their mission, but this marketing success came at a steep cost. The Battlefront community is still deeply offended, in fact, it’s quite possible that Soderlund’s admission further stoked their discontent.
Soderlund also said though that his side has learned from the debacle, and he essentially promised that next year’s Battlefront would indeed come with a full single-player campaign. As far as the quality of the product is concerned though, Soderlund said he believed the game was a solid one under the given circumstances. While it has only managed a score of 75 on review aggregator Metacritic, which means that most of the ratings handed out were “mixed” or “average”, the sales-figures do indeed tell a different story. At the end of the day, EA have accomplished their goals, and some of their players (perhaps the silent majority) were happy with what they got. With more DLCs underway and with a whole series of sequels promised for the coming years, the future of the franchise seems quite bright indeed.
