'Battlefield Hardline' Release Date Delayed Until 2015

“Battlefield Hardline” will be delayed until next year, according to a post on the “Battlefield” blog.

“Today we are announcing that ‘Battlefield Hardline’ will launch in early 2015. Obviously, this is big news, so I’d like to address why we’re making this change,” said EA DICE Vice President Karl Magnus Troedsson on Tuesday.

Troedsson explained that developer Visceral Games and publisher Electronic Arts were able to get a lot of feedback from players at June’s Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, and the feedback helped them realize more features could be added to the game – features that would greatly improve “Hardline’s” gameplay experience.

“This feedback also spurred us to start thinking about other possibilities and ways we could push 'Hardline' innovation further and make the game even better. The more we thought about these ideas, the more we knew we had to get them into the game you will all be playing,” Troedsson explained. “However, there was only one problem. We would need more time. Time that we didn’t have if we decided to move forward with launching in just a couple of months.”

Troedsson detailed which features would be added to the game via his blog post:

1. Multiplayer Innovation: Coming out of our E3 beta, internal focus tests, and work with our community, we have received a lot of great Multiplayer thinking. We’re going to be adding some new feature ideas direct from the community that will evolve the cops and criminals fantasy into a truly unique Battlefield Multiplayer experience.

2. Single Player Story Depth: In order to ensure our Single Player experience delivers on player expectations, we’re spending more time polishing our core features, as well as adding a few new ones that will support a deeper “crime revenge” story experience.

3. Stability: This has been a focus for our team since day one and we’re going to be using the extra time to continue to optimize the game for a stable launch. We have learned a lot from Battlefield 4, are continuing to learn from our Community Test Environment and will learn more from another Hardline beta. More time allows us to surface issues that the team can attempt to fix prior to launch.

We are doing all of this for one reason. Because we want Battlefield Hardline to be the best game it can be, and so that we can create the best environment for a smooth launch for our players.

This will be the first series installment since 2013's shooter "Battlefield 4." Since the game's launch on Oct. 29 last year, "BF4" has experienced major technical issues and crashes on all platforms, resulting in angry fans and annoyed players who accused EA DICE of selling them a broken game. It’s no surprise that the Swedish developer and Visceral Games want to avoid the same issues by working on the game longer.

"Battlefield Hardline" was originally slated for an October 21 release.