EA Confident Of No ‘Star Wars: Battlefront’ Delay, Expects 10 Million Sales

Talk of a possible delay to Star Wars: Battlefront cropped up Thursday following a published interview with Electronic Arts Chief Operating Officer Peter Moore. This led to questions about the likelihood of a delay during the publisher’s quarterly earnings call later in the day. These questions were shot down by company executives though who maintained their confidence in the release date and sales estimates for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC shooter.

Moore was asked by MCV about the how willing EA would be to delay Star Wars: Battlefront if the game wasn’t ready for its November 17 release. Battlefield: Hardline was delayed from a fall 2014 release to spring 2015 launch due to issues, but would the company do the same to Battlefront with so much dependent on releasing close to Star Wars: The Force Awakens?

“Yes, because you can’t ship it if it doesn’t work or the quality level isn’t right,” Moore said. “You just bite the bullet. Trust me, shipping Battlefield: Hardline in March was not the easiest thing to do from a business perspective, but it was absolutely the right thing to do from a ‘players first’ perspective. We would have no compunction, no hesitation whatsoever, that if something was to go wrong with Star Wars Battlefront – if it wasn’t right – we would just push it.”

What was missing in much of the discussion, however, was Moore’s next sentence stating, “That’s not going to happen.” That statement was echoed by EA CEO Andrew Wilson and Executive Vice President Blake Jorgenson during Thursday’s earnings call.

“We’re feeling very good about the game right now,” Wilson responded to a Battlefront delay question as captured by Seeking Alpha. “This is a tried and true development team building on the Frostbite engine that’s now launched a number of products on this platform generation, and we’re coming on the third phase of development on this generation of products.”

Wilson then pointed out that they will have over 200 demo units at the Gamescom convention in Cologne, Germany next week for the tens of thousands of attendees to try out themselves. Jorgenson was similarly upbeat about meeting the Star Wars: Battlefront release date.

“Just to clarify, there’s no change obviously in ship date on that whatsoever,” the executive said. “We’re very confident that we should be able to hit that date based on what Andrew just told you.”

Moore later chimed in during the call that pre-orders for Star Wars: Battlefront are “extremely strong” after E3 despite the fact that the industry’s move to digital has made pre-order number a less significant factor. Previous estimates of 9 to 10 million in sales for Battlefront also remain unchanged.

DICE just revealed the new Team Deathmatch mode, Blast, for Star Wars: Battlefront yesterday. More is expected to be shown at Gamescom next week including the possibility of more playable hero and villain characters.

[Images via Star Wars: Battlefront]