Yesterday, EA announced that Battlefield 4 was in the works through an a Medal of Honor: Warfighter limited edition announcement. EA said that if you bought the Medal of Honor: Warfighter Limited Edition you would gain access to the Battlefield 4 beta. However, today EA rectified that statement by saying that the Battlefield 4 beta will not be exclusive to people who buy the Medal of Honor: Warfighter Limited Edition.

EA’s initial statement yesterday:

“The exclusive Battlefield 4 beta will be available in Fall 2013, Additional details regarding Battlefield 4 will be revealed at a later date.”

Today Battlefield 3 community manager Ian Tornay clarified the statement:

“There will be other ways to get into the beta aside from Medal of Honor: Warfighter, At this time, however, it is the only way to guarantee entry.”

So there will be other ways to access the Battlefield 4 beta, EA is just not going to announce them right now. Tornay went on to address fans concerns that Battlefield 4 will have a very fast development time:

“We’ve been seeing a lot of concerns about the pacing of release (i.e. “only” two years after BF3). I think it’s worth noting that DICE has released a Battlefield game every two years or sooner AND Mirror’s Edge at least every two years.

“I truly believe that we’re in one of the best positions to be creating our next title – Frostbite 2 has matured, we’ve been gathering fan feedback like crazy, Battlefield 3 continues to expand with features which we can learn from, and we’ve got more data about how people play than ever.”

Finally Tornay went on to discuss something that EA and DICE mentioned yesterday, that just because Battlefield 4 has been announced it doesn’t mean that they will be abandoning Battlefield 3. Also that DICE still wants fans to keep sending them feedback so they can continue to improve the Battlefield 3 experience.

As much as Tornay tries to dissuade my concern for Battlefield 4, I still have a lingering feeling the game won’t be able to live up to its’ predecessor.  Yes DICE has released a Battlefield game after only two years Battlefield: Bad Company 1 and 2, but there was a much longer time between Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 3.

Not to say I think the game will be a failure, but I think it will be a more slow degradation, like we have seen with the Call of Duty series. If you continually release games and don’t give them proper development time; they don’t always go bad, they get very stale. I don’t think people are too worried that Battlefield 4 will be a bad game, I think most of us are concerned the franchise will start to stagnate like the Call of Duty franchise.