Hardline doesn't mean Battlefield will be an annual release

With Battlefield 4 coming out last autumn, and Battlefield: Hardline set for release later this year, some players have expressed concerns that EA is putting the series on an annual release cycle akin to Call of Duty. But that's not necessarily the case, as EA Studios executive VP Patrick Söderlund said to Polygon.

"Karl-Magnus [Troedsson], who runs DICE studios, and Steve Papoutsis, who runs Visceral, basically met in Barcelona almost three years ago and they came to me and said 'Hey, we have an idea,'" Söderlund said. He explains that the idea of a cops & robbers Battlefield game has been around for over a decade, and now seemed like a good time to do it. His only condition was that Visceral would try their hand at a Battlefield expansion first, so they'd know what they were getting into.

"It doesn't necessarily mean that we need to annualize Battlefield and that's the way it's going to be forever and ever. I understand that some people may look at it that way but that's what happened", Söderlund added.