EA: Battlefield 4’s tech issues aren’t hurting sales; 5 expansion packs to come

Battlefield 4 has suffered from a number of connection and stability issues, but this isn’t hurting its sales.

Publisher Electronic Arts confirmed that sales for all of its games, including Battlefield 4, were down on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 from what it was expecting for the holiday season. The drop in performance for Battlefield 4, however, had nothing to do with the shooter’s well-documented technical issues.

“Yes, we saw some softness [in sales across all current-gen games], but we don’t believe it was a link to any quality issues [for Battlefield 4],” EA chief operating officer Peter Moore said in a conference call with investors. “But this game has a long tail, and we’ll be able to sell it effectively through the next year.”

This means that while gamers are complaining about how Battlefield 4 is working, consumers are still picking up the game at the same rate as they would if it was working perfectly, according to EA.

EA also revealed that it plans to release five more expansions for Battlefield 4 during 2014. That’s in addition to the China Rising downloadable content it launched in 2013.

Battlefield 4 launched on Oct. 29 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. It debuted in November alongside the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Gamers quickly noticed that it was suffering from connectivity issues that would prevent players from getting into certain match types. The shooter also had a number of bugs that would crash or freeze the modern-military title. EA and developer DICE released a number of patches to fix Battlefield 4, but some of those updates have broken the game further.

In December, EA promised that DICE wouldn’t move on to any other projects until it had Battlefield 4 fully functioning.

“When Battlefield 4 launched, it was a complex product,” EA Studios boss Patrick Soderlund said. “Based on our beta testing, we were confident before the game launched.”

During the call, Soderlund said that the problems that effected Battlefield 4 only happen on a large scale, and it couldn’t test for these issues prior to launch.