Hilleman is brave enough to state he doesn’t think ”most of my customers are willing to say” it’s a ‘bad product’ either. From sales and a gameplay perspective it’s been a ”exceedingly successful product”.
EA accept it was troubled and it should have been better, but they aren’t going to throw Battlefield 4 under the bus.
”We did things wrong,” Rich Hilleman said at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas. “We know that. We’re gonna fix those things. We’re gonna try to be smart about what customers want in the future. But I’m not willing to accept – and I don’t think most of my customers are willing to say – ‘it’s a bad product, I wish I didn’t buy it’.”
“The more customers you have, the more noise becomes available,” he continued. ”I think what we’re hearing is, ‘You made a game we really liked. We would’ve liked it a little better if it didn’t have these problems’. Many of those problems we can fix, and we have and will.” The EA CCO was all dismissive of claims they didn’t beta test enough.
“I don’t have the numbers off the top of my head, but my impression is that BF4 had more than 10,000 beta testers before it shipped,” he said. “Now, some of the problems we had were related to systems that were not released. Beta testing on an unreleased system is difficult.”
”The obvious and glaring issues - the ones we heard most about from our customers, the ones that matter most to them - we’ve really gotten on top of those and they’re fixed,” he continued. “What is most important is to know how to not have the problem next time, and that’s kinda what I’m proudest about.”
EA has another major shooting getting ready for launch next month. Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall is now accepting closed beta registrations, with the beta itself beginning February 14th.
