EA pushes Battlefield V to late November

Electronic Arts has announced it is pushing the release of its latest first-person shooter, Battlefield V, back by a month - and its investors are distinctly unimpressed, despite the company having sound reasons for doing so.

Coming two years after the release, in numerically confused fashion, of Battlefield 1, Battlefield V promises to be a rebirth for the franchise: Electronic Arts claims to have learned from past mistakes and won't be putting lootboxes or season pass locks on its content, while the PC version of the game has been confirmed as being among those that support the ray-trace (RT) cores of Nvidia's new Turing architecture GeForce RTX family of graphics cards.

Those eager to pick the game up, though, are going to be disappointed to learn that EA has decided to push its launch back by a month to November 20th. 'Over the summer, we've had tens of thousands of players get their hands on the game during our Closed Alphas and at E3 and Gamescom – where we were honoured to receive the awards for Best Multiplayer Game at both shows,' claims Oskar Gabrielson, general manager of EA studio DICE, of the delay. 'You have told us that you are seeing an increased focus on squad play come through, you are also feeling the difference in our revamped player movement and we are getting a lot of positive feedback for our improved weapons handling.

'You've also spurred us to make some meaningful improvements to the core gameplay experience, including adjusting the gameplay tempo, improving soldier visibility and reducing player friction. We're going to take the time to continue to make some final adjustments to core gameplay, and to ensure we really deliver on the potential of Tides of War. We know moving the launch date means that we all have to wait a little longer. But we're going to take our time to make sure we get it right.'

The delay moves the game from its originally-schedule October 19th launch date, which coincidentally pushes it further away from the October 12th release of rival angry-shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. EA's investors, though, are unimpressed by the news that a month's delay will impact the company's projected fourth-quarter revenue: The company's share price plunged nearly 10 percent on the news.