Electronic Arts is teasing that they will have an announcement to make during the Game Developer’s Conference later this month, which has lead to speculation that the publisher is finally ready to give Battlefield 4 a proper reveal.
IGN is reporting to have received a “save the date” invitation from Electronic Arts, that asks those attending to RSVP for a “March 26, 2013 – 7PM” event at a movie theater in San Francisco. The date happens to be on the second day of GDC (which runs from March 25th through March 29th this year), and just after this year’s PAX East convention.
The invitation itself does not specifically state that the event is Battlefield 4 related, however, the colors used for the image are very similar to Battlefield 3‘s box art.
During an Electronic Arts’ earnings call last January EA Labels president Frank Gibeau revealed that the timeline for the debut of Battlefield 4 would “come in about 90 days”. The upcoming March 26th event will be about 60 days out from that proclamation, which means that if it is related to EA’s military shooter the publisher has moved up its official debut.
Perhaps the most solid evidence of this event being for Battlefield 4 comes from GameStop CEO J. Paul Raines, who announced on his Twitter account last month that he had just seen a “sneak peek” of the technically unannounced game. Electronic Arts later retweeted that message, seemingly confirming that the behind-closed-doors event took place.
As for official information about Battlefield 4, we do know that the game is scheduled to be released during EA’s fiscal 2014 year (sometime between April 1, 2013 and March 31, 2014). Additionally, the publisher stated that a beta for the shooter will take place this Fall, which would seem to indicate a Holiday 2013 release window.
Finally, Electronic Arts’ CEO, John Riccitiello, hinted during an earnings call that Battlefield 4 is being developed for the next generation consoles, saying “We think Battlefield and FIFA are going to help us lead as we move into the next set of technology opportunities and platform opportunities,”.
We will keep an eye out for any information that comes out of this March 26th event, and let you know if it ends up being Battlefield 4.
[Update] New invites have confirmed that the reveal will indeed be for Battlefield 4.