Da de både annonserte spillet og kjørte igang den første betaen på årets E3-messe, forklarte utvikler Visceral Games stolt at Battlefield: Hardline skulle slippes den 23. oktober. Nå har de imidlertid snudd på flisa og annonsert at Hardline, i likhet med en rekke andre storspill som egentlig skulle slippes i år (eksempelvis The Order: 1886, Mad Max, Batman: Arkham Knight og The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), ikke ankommer før en gang til neste år.
Årsaken er ganske enkelt at de ønsker å sikre kvaliteten (og trolig unngå en gjentagelse av den skandaløse Battlefield 4-lanseringen) og på Battlefield-bloggen forklarer de hvilke tre punkter de skal fokusere mest på fremover:
Multiplayer Innovation: Coming out of our E3 beta, internal focus tests, and work with our community, we have received a lot of great Multiplayer thinking. We're going to be adding some new feature ideas direct from the community that will evolve the cops and criminals fantasy into a truly unique Battlefield Multiplayer experience.
Single Player Story Depth: In order to ensure our Single Player experience delivers on player expectations, we're spending more time polishing our core features, as well as adding a few new ones that will support a deeper "crime revenge" story experience.
Stability: This has been a focus for our team since day one and we're going to be using the extra time to continue to optimize the game for a stable launch. We have learned a lot from Battlefield 4, are continuing to learn from our Community Test Environment and will learn more from another Hardline beta. More time allows us to surface issues that the team can attempt to fix prior to launch.