Star Wars: Battlefront Sequel’s Release Window Confirmed, Will Have Single-Player

During yesterday’s third-quarter earnings call, EA confirmed a few major details regarding the sequel to 2015’s Star Wars: Battlefront reboot.

First, the company confirmed the game’s release for holiday 2017. CEO Andrew Wilson then went on to confirm the already-hinted-at inclusion of a single-player campaign, as well as that the sequel would have “more heroes and characters” than its predecessor, and take place in more locations “across multiple Star Wars eras.”

EA’s Patrick Soderlund confirmed months earlier that the exclusion of single-player from the first game was mainly part of the company’s effort toward a side-by-side release with December 2015’s The Force Awakens.

The new Battlefront game is a collaboration between initial developer DICE, new Canadian studio EA Motive and Need for Speed dev Criterion (who worked on Battlefront’s X-Wing VR mission).

About a month ago, Justin McCully from EA spoke openly about the reality of leaving single-player out of the first game and what the developers’ goals are for the second:

The focus of the first game was to nail the core multiplayer experience of what DICE does great. That was the strategy of that title. And now as we expand in the universe we have better sense of what characters are coming into play, what stories we can tell, what stories are maybe being told in a film versus a game, that’s where we’ve really ramped up the interaction with the [Lucasfilm Story Group] to bring those games to market. We heard the fans loud and clear that the multiplayer was great, but it wasn’t enough and they wanted that complete package. So the team has been very focused on delivering that single-player element.

Yesterday, EA and DICE announced that they’d no longer be updating the Skirmish content for 2015’s Battlefront. The addition of this mode allowed single-player or co-op engagement in battles against AI-controlled enemies, something that was not included in the initial multiplayer-only release. Instead of providing these updates, DICE is fully shifted into the development of the game’s sequel.

For more on EA’s earnings call announcements from yesterday, you can read the transcript here.