EA stops development on Apex Legends and Battlefield mobile titles
EA has announced a double whammy for fans of two of its biggest franchises: Development on Apex Legends Mobile as well as Battlefield Mobile has halted. Calling this a “strategic decision”, EA states that the inability to “meet the expectations of our players” was a deciding factor in both cases.
“Despite Apex Mobile’s strong start, the ongoing experience was not going to meet the expectations of our players. After months of working with our development partner, we have made the mutual decision to sunset the mobile game”, EA had to say regarding Apex Legends Mobile.
Respawn Entertainment provided its own perspective on the incoming shutdown, stating: “Following a strong start, the content pipeline for Apex Legends Mobile has begun to fall short of that bar for quality, quantity, and cadence.” The studio appears to be open for further venture on the mobile platform, however: “Respawn and the Apex Legends team remain excited about mobile as a platform and look forward to new opportunities to serve players there in the future.”
Apex Legends Mobile has entered a 90-day sunset period and will be permanently shut down on May 1, 2023, at 4pm PDT / 7pm EDT, which is May 2, 2023, at 12am BST / 1am CEST.
As for Battlefield Mobile, EA explains that “[a]s the industry has evolved and our strategy to create a deeply connected Battlefield ecosystem has taken shape, we decided to pivot from the current direction to best deliver on our vision for the franchise and to meet the expectations of our players.”
The publisher states that it remains “highly committed” to the Battlefield series, working on more updates for Battlefield 2042 and entering “pre-production on our future Battlefield experiences at our studios across the globe.”
Battlefield 2042 recently added a form of the traditional class system back into the game after the spectacular failure of the new specialist system, which was supposed to give players more freedom on how to equip themselves. In practice, however, it led to everyone using pretty much the same weapons and gadgets to not be at a disadvantage.
