Pre-release beta tests led EA to believe that Battlefield 4 was ready to ship, the publisher has said, with problems allegedly only arriving once the game had launched. Discussing the game's post-launch issues during EA's Q3 FY14 briefing last night, executive VP of EA Games Patrick Soderlund described the development of Battlefield 4 as being "very complex", due to launching on two new consoles in addition to current-gen and PC.

"We were pushing innovation heavily and we're delivering 60 frames per second gameplay for 64 players plus the ability to connect via mobile tablet as a commander into the product, coupled those with some very innovative features in the gameplay side," he said. "Based on our prelaunch testing, our beta performance, we were confident the game was ready when it was launched. "Shortly after launch, however, we began hearing about problems from our player community, and the development team quickly began to address the situation. So what have we done since we encountered the problems is we were fortunate to have an architecture in place that allows us to adjust and update the game rapidly, and that's actually what we've done. We released multiple software updates across all platforms to resolve the primary issues and game stability has significantly increased." Soderlund stresses that the situation surrounding Battlefield 4 was unique, however, with the challenges the publisher faced being "different from anything that we've seen before with other games". "There were different issues that only manifest its scale in the post-launch live environment," he continued. "We're taking multiple steps to evaluate what occurred and incorporate those learnings into our development process for future products, so we don't experience the same problems again. I would close on the fact that Battlefield 4 remains an amazing game with massive innovation, and we're confident that gamers will be logging on to play for a long time to come."