Rumor mill: An industry insider claims that EA and DICE have started work on the next Battlefield game. They plan for it to be a significant course change after the catastrophic launch of Battlefield 2042 last November.

Rumor has it that the next Battlefield game is in early development. According to Xfire, EA says it has learned lessons from Battlefield 2042 and plans to reverse changes it made in that game. The recently released title quickly became one of Steam's worst-rated games of all time, and hundreds of thousands of players have petitioned for refunds.

Players complained of numerous bugs and missing features like VoIP, server browsers, and persistent lobbies. An anonymous insider says one feature EA is talking about changing for the next game is the specialist class — unique player characters, which weren't well-received in Battlefield 2042.

As my own comment for this too - It's going to be interesting to see when this title releases. Holiday 2023 would be the golden opportunity as they'd be no competition from COD, but that timeframe might be too short to bring a polished title.

Interesting times ahead.

— Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) March 23, 2022

Future changes in both 2042 and the next game could involve specialists and the class system. One confirmed detail is that the next iteration will have a modern or near-future setting similar to Battlefield 2042. However, Dice still plans to release new content for 2042.

Last December, Tom Henderson's recap of Battlefield 2042's development alleged that it actually started as a battle royale title. A year and a half before launch, it changed drastically due to the success of another battle royale from EA, Apex Legends. Henderson also pointed out problems with EA's Frostbite engine, while EA's official post-mortem blamed the failure on the difficulties of remote working and positive fan reception to Halo Infinite.