UPDATE: EA has announced that “Battlefield 6” will officially be known as Battlefield V.
ORIGINAL STORY: Electronic Arts delivered their quarterly financial report yesterday, and the megapublisher used the opportunity to shuffle their upcoming release schedule.
Confirming rumors we first heard last week, EA’s CEO, Andrew Wilson, announced that BioWare’s Anthem will now launch in Early 2019:
Our new IP, Anthem is a stunning project from BioWare that will blend genres with a shared world experience that evolves around its players. Excitement for Anthem is building, and we’re deeply invested in delivering a great new experience with this game when it launches in [Early 2019].
None of EA’s executives had much else to say about Anthem, but Wilson returned during the Q&A portion to fill in a few more details about the delay. According to the CEO, Anthem was delayed to give it some breathing room away from the Fall 2018 launch of Battlefield 6:
The first thing about Anthem is regardless of kind of how it’s being portrayed, we are not looking at that as a delay in the game. We’ve chosen to launch Anthem in [Early 2019] and the date is really determined by portfolio of balancing consideration not for product readiness reasons. It’s tracking well on its development milestones. We are really confident of its ship date.
We are really excited by the way the next Battlefield is shaping up and it might set… it probably doesn’t make sense to launch Anthem right up next to it. And when you think about Anthem as a brand new IP, we also believe it make sense to give it its own launch window so that we can give us a focus and attention that it deserve and give it some free air.
As for Battlefield 6, Wilson promised that it will appeal to “longtime fans and new players alike” with “innovation at every level, incredible stories at the core, astonishing visuals, and gameplay that will captivate every Battlefield fan.”
