Battlefield 2042 twice as popular as Battlefield 5 claims EA

Battlefield 2042 – how popular is it really? (pic: EA)

Despite intense criticism from fans, EA has insisted that Battlefield 2042 is doing well and better than Battlefield 5 at the same point.

A few months ago, there looked to be an exciting three-way battle on the cards, between Call Of Duty: Vanguard, Battlefield 2042, and Halo Infinite. But now that all three games are out (or at least the multiplayer of Halo is) things haven’t turned out as expected.

Vanguard might have sold poorly but its critical reception was not especially harsh, while Halo Infinite has gone from laughing stock to the best online shooter of 2021 in the span of a year. Battlefield 2042 though is more complicated, with a poor launch full of complaints but – according to EA – plenty of people playing.

A new blog from developer DICE claims that ‘millions’ of people are now enjoying the game, although that almost certainly includes those using the 10-hour trail via EA Play, which is available for free via Game Pass Ultimate.

There’s certainly no mention of sales figures at this point, and no way to estimate them given the majority are likely to be digital downloads (the game only debuted at number three in the physical sales chart in the UK).

Although EA are clearly trying to put the best spin possible on the game’s performance they have admitted that there’s a lot of work to be done and promised major updates in the near future.

Much fan anger has been concentrated on what is perceived as missing features from previous games, with DICE planning two, if not three, updates before the end of the year.

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The first is due out tomorrow, November 25, and will try to fix complaints about revive bugs and too much weapon bloom.

The next update, in early December, will be larger and will aim to rebalance the Specialists, fix more bugs, redo the user interface, and fix the audio problems.

There’s no confirmation yet, though, on when and if a scoreboard and post-match global stats screen will be added to the game – things that have been in all the previous games and which many fans are upset about missing out on in Battlefield 2042.

DICE claims to be ‘carefully evaluating’ these and other missing features but the only one that’s confirmed for now is a traditional server browser, which inexplicably is not in the current version of the game.

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