EA Boss Willing to Move Battlefield Release Date to Account for ‘Nuanced Year Relative to Competition’ (*Cough* GTA 6 *Cough*)

2025 looks like a stacked year for triple-A video games. Not only do we have the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 and its exclusive games to contend with, but we’ve got a long list of big hitters set for later in 2025, such as Borderlands 4, Mafia: The Old Country, and Ghost of Yōtei. And then there’s the inevitable new Call of Duty from Activision, no doubt set for October or November.

But the big one is Rockstar’s guaranteed behemoth Grand Theft Auto 6, which is still down for release in fall 2025 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S. Will it be delayed? Parent company Take-Two is so far sticking to the fall 2025 release window, but it’s that uncertainty coupled with all the other huge shooters coming out that means EA’s Battlefield may face a tricky job carving out some space for itself.

EA has the next Battlefield down for its 2026 fiscal year, which means before April 2026. That’s prime GTA 6 territory right there, and maybe even prime Call of Duty and Borderlands 4 territory. So, how much does EA have to consider release dates from competing games when it comes to working out when to launch Battlefield?

A fair bit, EA CEO Andrew Wilson admitted in a recent financial call — and it may even be willing to delay Battlefield if it has to.

“Certainly we exist in a competitive marketplace,” Wilson said in response to a question from an analyst on this exact topic. “I’ve had the great fortune to be in this company for 25 years and we have done a great job of competing with all of our great franchises over time.

“That being said, we’ve invested more in this Battlefield than any Battlefield before. We have four studios. We’ve had a meaningful amount of time. We’re looking for this to be the biggest Battlefield we’ve ever made. And we of course want to make sure that we launch that into a window where we can deliver on the fullness of the promise of what Battlefield can be and grow the community to a level that is commensurate with the size of the game that we’re making.

“I do believe that this year might be a nuanced year relative to competition. There may be some things happening in the year that may cause us to think differently about our launch timing. We have an FY 26 launch window that the team is targeting. We believe the game will be great and ready at that time, but if we got close to that timeframe and believed that this wasn’t going to be a great window for us, then we would take a look at what an alternate window might be that would give us the appropriate time, energy, and player acquisition opportunity for this Battlefield to be all that it needed to be.”

As it stands, the new Battlefield will be out before April 2026. Let’s say November 2025 (Battlefield 2042 came out November 2021 and Battlefield 5 came out November 2018). What if GTA 6 launches in or around then? Perhaps EA will, in response, push Battlefield back to the first quarter of 2026, still making its fiscal year.

But what if it intends to release Battlefield Q1 2026 already, and then Rockstar announces a GTA 6 delay to Q1 2026? Could EA bring Battlefield forward? Or maybe it would, in that case, push Battlefield out of the fiscal year and into the next. That would be a big decision, but based on Wilson’s comments, something EA is prepared for.

You can see why EA, and, we’ve heard, many other third-party publishers are holding their breath as they wait for Rockstar to announce the news the entire industry is hanging on: the GTA 6 release date. Once that’s out in the open, whether it’s for this fall as planned or a delay into 2026, all the other pieces will fall no doubt into place.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.