Battlefield 6 is one of the key new releases in EA’s lineup for the next fiscal year, but Andrew Wilson isn’t concerned about it competing with GTA 6, the CEO revealed in EA’s latest earnings call–and the latter game’s recent delay to May 2026 likely has a lot to do with it.
EA announced during its presentation that the next Battlefield will launch within fiscal year 2026, meaning it should be here sometime before March 2026. In the Q&A following EA’s briefing, Wilson was asked his thoughts on the change in release window for the “big major expected release,” clearly referring to GTA 6, which was recently delayed to May 2026.
“Typically today, games take many years to build and develop,” Wilson began his answer, explaining why it’s not a simple task to move release dates around based on events like the GTA 6 delay. “It’s unlikely that if you weren’t already ready to launch in this window, it may be hard to get ready and take advantage of what might be otherwise a less competitive window than we may have anticipated earlier.”
“Relative to Battlefield, what we have said all along is we’ve been building towards a window that we thought made the most sense for Battlefield–but we wouldn’t launch into a window that we thought truncated the value that we’ve invested into the franchise or the value that we think our players will derive from it.” Wilson continued. “I think now, without going too far, we believe that window is clearer than it was before, and we feel very good about launching Battlefield in FY2026.”
Battlefield is one of EA’s major new releases for the next fiscal year, alongside the live-service-oriented Skate reboot. Other than those two new releases, EA is relying on its EA Sports portfolio and The Sims franchise to keep its business healthy for the new year. EA revealed that live service made up 73% of its business in FY25–and it’s only planning on leaning into live service more in coming years.
EA CFO Stuart Canfield revealed that the company plans to “transition to a more focused slate anchored around massive online communities and select blockbuster storytelling investments,” meaning we’ll generally see fewer new games from EA, and more of them will be oriented around live service.
The earnings call didn’t meaningfully address the recent wave of layoffs across EA, or the related cancellation of two incubation projects at Apex Legends developer Respawn. EA did touch on Apex Legends’ recent underperformance, with the company expecting the hero shooter to see a 40% decline over the next year. When discussing the future of the game, EA simply said, “We continue to focus on delivering for our core players and investing in the long-term evolution of the franchise.”
Though neither the CEO or the CFO mentioned recent layoffs, Wilson did take a moment to discuss how AI is being further integrated into EA’s workflows across the company. “We view AI as a powerful accelerator of creativity, innovation, and player connection,” Wilson said. “Across our teams, we’re investing in new workflows and capabilities to integrate AI to enhance how we build, scale, and personalize experiences–from dynamic in-game worlds, to delivering authentic athlete and team likenesses at incredible scale.”
