Battlefield Heroes Delayed, Beta Suspended

Battlefield Heroes developer EA DICE announced that it will take the cartoonish PC shooter's current closed beta offline starting tonight, planning to focus on polishing the backend instead. Senior producer James Salt explains that the studio is entering the next phase of development and will work on polishing the title's website and "parts of the beta that aren't the game." "You know the old saying about icebergs being 10 percent above water, and 90 percent below?" says Salt. "Heroes is a little like that. There's the 10 percent game part you can see, and the hiding 90 percent is what we call the 'backend.'" He continues, "The backend does a lot of things. From running the website's features and looking after the items you have, to collecting the results from each Heroes game and matchmaking players into games." Heroes will be the first title in the Battlefield series released under Electronic Arts' new Play 4 Free model, which provides the game for free but generates revenue through advertisements and micropayments for character customizations. The game was originally slated for release in summer 2008, but Electronic Arts delayed the title to late 2008 to "focus on some of the social networking features." Now, the company doesn't expect to re-open its beta until early 2009.