EA Reveals Why Star Wars: Battlefront Lacked Single Player, Promises To Address Going Forward

While Star Wars: Battlefront successfully relaunched a franchise and made a sizable impact on the sales charts, many players felt it was still missing something.

That something was any sort of real solo gameplay. Sure, you could play a few solo missions to pass the time, but it would never be confused for a substantive solo campaign, and wouldn’t hold your attention for very long.

EA Studio head Patrick Soderlund spoke about the much-highlighted issue during EA’s Investor Day (via Gamespot), regarding why that decision was made as well as their renewed outlook on the topic going forward.

“The one thing that we got criticized for was the lack of a single-player campaign. It was a conscious decision we made due to time and being able to launch the game side-by-side with the movie that came out to get the strongest possible impact,” he explained. “I think the team created a really good game based on the premise that we had. I would say the game has done very well for us and reached a very different demographic than a traditional EA game. So from that perspective, it’s a success. Are we happy with the 75 rating? No. Is that something we’re going to cure going forward? Absolutely.”

Soderlund also referenced gamers growing expectations for a $60 product, saying: “The depth and breadth is something that’s proving to be more and more important,” he said. “In a world where we want $60 up front and we expect people to stay with us over the course of a long time, the depth of what we offer is important.”

In regards to Battlefront specifically, he said: “We have to go back and course correct that for another version if we were ever to build one.” That bodes well for the future of the franchise. I understand the time crunch aspect, but hopefully with whatever the sequel ends up being the developers will have some additional time to make sure the product is more fully formed.