Battlefield V delay: No longer the meat in the Red Dead/Black Ops sandwich

Electronic Arts announced today that it has delayed Battlefield V from October 19 to November 20. The World War II military shooter is Electronic Arts’ only major holiday release, and it originally intended to launch it October 19. That would have put it between Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 on October 12 and Red Dead Redemption 2 on October 26.

This new date should give Battlefield V more room to breathe while also providing developer DICE a few more weeks to polish the launch experience. But this will also put Battlefield V in closer proximity with Bethesda’s Fallout 76 online role-playing adventure. Fallout, however, may appeal to a different enough audience that it won’t compete for the same dollars in the way Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 does. And while Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t a shooter, many consider it the biggest launch of the year regardless of genre.

This delay should also help Electronic Arts improve its messaging before Battlefield V’s release. The publisher has dealt with dissatisfied fans since its first reveal event. Some players hate women and hate that they’re in the game, but others thought the trailer was underwhelming. But the game has played good in betas and at industry shows, and the private reveal event EA and DICE did for the media was much more convincing. If DICE and EA use this extra time to give fans a better idea of what Battlefield V is all about, it could turn around some of that sluggish momentum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_L43c7aQj0

Finally, a November release date can give DICE more time to better implement ray tracing tech to support Nvidia’s 20-series RTX cards. The 2080 and 2080 Ti launch in September, and Battlefield V is going to support that physics-based lighting technology at launch. But ray tracing could hurt performance. With some extra time, DICE could optimize performance enough that ray tracing works and the game still runs well on most RTX-enabled rigs.