EA says "it hasn't always" understood what Battlefield players want, but the response to the new entry has "far exceeded our expectations" after "thousands of hours" of playtests

Battlefield publisher EA has admitted it hasn't always been perfectly in sync with fans of the FPS series, but feedback from playtesters on the next game in the series has apparently been encouraging.

During EA's Q4 2025 earnings call, CEO Andrew Wilson explained why Battlefield Labs is "the biggest playtesting initiative in franchise history," and in doing so, he kind of forced himself to publicly acknowledge, in the most carefully worded, corporatey way of course, the fact that Battlefield 2042 wasn't exactly a smash hit with fans.

"We've always worked closely with the community, but we haven't always worked as closely as we should have," said Wilson during the Q&A portion of the call. "We haven't always really worked to help them understand the things that we're building and for us to understand the things that they really want out of a battlefield. We know that when we get it right, Battlefield is a giant franchise and often the biggest shooter in the year."

EA's solution to feeling like it doesn't always fully understand the Battlefield community is a pragmatic one: open the next game up to the series' biggest playtest ever and listen to the feedback. According to Wilson, who said during scripted remarks that so far, more than 600,000 playtesters across North America and Europe have completed "1000s of hours of gameplay" and "the response has far exceeded expectations."

Wilson said that, because of "this incredible global demand," EA is inviting more players from North America and Europe to join Labs and also opening up the program to Asia.

Battlefield 6 is in development across four different studios, with longtime developer DICE heading up the multiplayer component and other key game systems. Meanwhile, Need for Speed and Burnout studio Criterion is pumping the brakes on its racing games to fully commit to working on Battlefield.

We don't have a release date just yet, but EA has said Battlefield 6 will launch before April 2026.