Taking the series back to a modern setting, Battlefield 2042 is poised to do things differently than in the franchise’s past. Aside from boasting technical improvements across the board, like supporting up to 128 players in a single lobby, BF2042 will also feature a crazy mash-up mode called Portal and surprisingly no ranked modes of any kind.
Like other Battlefield games recently, 2042 will be supported by additional content for years - success and popularity willing - making its life cycle much longer than the yearly release schedules that similar other franchises allow for. If Battlefield 2042 really is embracing the service model, additional monetization will likely appear in more forms than just expansions. This means that EA expects Battlefield 2042 to consistently bring in more revenue even after players make the initial purchase of the game itself, which suggests the possibility of microtransactions and other extra monetization features beyond standard DLC. EA has made some attempts to further monetize Battlefield games in the past, but most of these attempts have failed before they’ve gone live - one particularly infamous case was the proposed idea of charging real money for ammunition in-game. lol. Wilson also referred to Battlefield 2042 as a “platform” during the investor call, stating that it will be the foundation of the future of the Battlefield franchise. This is vague enough to possibly mean we’ll get the 1-2 years of paid expansions to follow release like before, but it could also mean the game is gunning for a longer period of service-style monetization. We have no official news of exactly what Battlefield 2042’s post-launch content will look like, but we definitely know that a lot of paid DLC and expansions will be involved, at a minimum. With games-as-a-service models having been consistently the most profitable AAA game products in recent years - regardless of how good these actually are for gamers - it is likely to be exactly what investors want to hear, as it indicates that Battlefield 2042 is being groomed as a consistent, long-term source of stable revenue for EA. Battlefield 2042 launches on the 22nd of October, 2021.
