EA Delays Anthem Until 2019, New Battlefield Entry Coming In Late 2018

Electronic Arts has changed the release date for Anthem, the online shooter being developed by BioWare, pushing it back to early 2019 instead of fall 2018 as the company previously stated. Despite the new launch time frame, EA insists the game is not delayed. Instead, the publisher changed the date to make room for a new Battlefield game launch, which it anticipates happening in October.

"It's not a delay," EA's finance chief Blake Jorgensen told The Wall Street Journal. "People are trying to create a story."
Call it what you will, Anthem is not coming out in the fall of 2017 as originally scheduled. Jorgensen's point is that Anthem's development is on track and where the company anticipated it would be at this point in time, despite a report in Kotaku claiming otherwise. So it's not a delay in the sense that it couldn't still launch this year if EA deemed that best. However, EA thinks Anthem has a better shot at being something big if it doesn't have to compete with a new Battlefield title, so gamers will have to wait until early next year.


Anthem has been in development for a long time now, since 2012 when Mass Effect director Casey Hudson was in charge of the project. He ended up leaving the company in 2014, then returned last year to oversea BioWare. The game is an online multiplayer action role playing title set in vast open world environment with a third-person perspective. It's basically EA's answer to Destiny. Whenever it does arrive, it will be available for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.

As for the new Battlefield game, not much is known at this point, such as the setting or plot. The last game in the franchise, Battlefield 1, came out in 2016 and will be getting new DLC called Apocalypse. Apocalypse will introduce new maps, weapons, gears, and gameplay modes.

"Battlefield 1 Apocalypse adds five multiplayer maps to the mix. The bloody, muddy hell of Passchendaele and the Austro-Italian clash of Caporetto portray two of the most infamous battles of World War 1, where you’ll go over the top to conquer bitterly-contested ground. The scenic wheat fields by River Somme transform into a nightmare after devastating artillery barrages," EA says.

Apocalypse is due out next month.