Battlefield 2042's Failure Shows That No Franchise Is Untouchable

thegamer.com:

When Battlefield 2042 was first unveiled I thought it would be a guaranteed success. DICE was finally leaving behind its mediocre solo campaigns in order to focus completely on multiplayer. This added dedication and capitalising on its greatest strengths should have been a surefire recipe for greatness, but it turns out I couldn't have been more wrong.

The game wasn't ready for launch in the slightest. It had inconsistent performance, busted servers, and an abundance of bugs and glitches across all platforms. Common features from previous games like voice chat and scoreboards were also missing for some unexplained reason, and it took several months for them to be added back in. But by then the damage was done, with the majority of players moving on after realising 2042's evident mediocrity. Now its future feels uncertain, and that’s a massive wake-up call for this industry.

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When I was growing it up it always felt like big franchises such as Battlefield, Halo, and Call of Duty were untouchable. They would always be the major players in the medium and it would take something truly monumental to usurp the thrones these names sat upon. Halo Infinite is slowly clawing back relevance even with its underwhelming second season, while Call of Duty continues to maintain a steady audience thanks to the popularity of Warzone, but Battlefield is a different story. That’s been the case for several years now, if we’re being honest.

Back when Battlefield 1 launched in 2016 it felt like a resurgence for the series. For years the genre was obsessed with futuristic depictions of warfare, so much so that venturing back in time and seeking to depict battles amidst trenches