Star Wars Battlefront skipped campaign to hit Force Awakens release

It’s been a huge commercial success, but from the off Star Wars Battlefront has been criticised for its lack of a meaningful single player mode.

Now Eurogamer reports that EA Studios boss Patrick Soderlund has admitted in an investor broadcast that DICE opted against developing a single player campaign in order to ensure the game was out in time to capitalise on the swell of Star Wars mania that accompanied the release of Force Awakens last Q4.

"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," he said, describing it as a "conscious decision".

He added: "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. So from that perspective, it’s a success. Are we happy with the 75 [Metacritic] rating? No. Is that something we’re going to cure going forward? Absolutely."

EA recently confirmed that Star Wars: Battlefront has beaten expectations with shipments of 14m copies. Star Wars: Battlefront 2 is due out in 2017, presumably alongside or ahead of the release of Star Wars: Episode VIII in December.