Star Wars Battlefront lacked a campaign mode because EA didn’t want it to miss the launch of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Star Wars Battlefront lacked a campaign to make it in time for The Force Awakens launch

Star Wars Battlefront released mid-November, just a couple of weeks ahead of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The movie was highly anticipated, and EA wanted to have Battlefront ready to launch alongside it.

Because of this, the publisher elected not to include a campaign mode, which was chief among the criticisms the game received from fans and critics alike.

That’s according to EA’s Patrick Soderlund, who told investors at the company’s Investor Day briefing that it was a “conscious decision.”

“We made [the choice] due to time and being able to launch the game side-by-side with the movie that came out to get the strongest possible impact,” Soderlund said, as reported by Eurogamer.

Battlefront currently has a 75 Metacritic rating, something the publisher isn’t too happy about, and one of the things it hopes the sequel will do better at.

“I think the team created a really good game based on the premise that we had. I would say the game has done very well for us and reached a very different demographic than a traditional EA game.

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“So from that perspective, it’s a success. Are we happy with the 75 rating? No. Is that something we’re going to cure going forward? Absolutely.”

A sequel to Battlefront was announced at EA’s recent earnings report, and it’s due for release in 2017.