The release of Battlefield Hardline, Electronic Arts’ new cops-and-robbers-themed shooter from Dead Space developer Visceral Games, has been pushed back until “early 2015,” it was announced today. The game was previously scheduled to be released on October 21.

In a blog post, Karl Magnus Troedsson, VP and GM of Battlefield series creator DICE, explained the reasoning for the move, summing things up by saying, “[W]e want Battlefield Hardline to be the best game it can be, and so that we can create the best environment for a smooth launch for our players.”

Both single-player and multiplayer will benefit from the delay, according to Troedsson. In the case of the latter, the developers plan to add “some new feature ideas direct from the community that will evolve the cops and criminals fantasy into a truly unique Battlefield Multiplayer experience.”

For the single-player, Visceral will be “spending more time polishing our core features, as well as adding a few new ones that will support a deeper ‘crime revenge’ story experience.” Visceral recently spoke about how it’s hoping to “do something completely different” with the game’s campaign, which draws inspiration from TV crime dramas.

Referring to feedback received from gamers who played the June beta, Troedsson says, “This feedback also spurred us to start thinking about other possibilities and ways we could push Hardline innovation further and make the game even better. The more we thought about these ideas, the more we knew we had to get them into the game you will all be playing. However, there was only one problem. We would need more time. Time that we didn’t have if we decided to move forward with launching in just a couple of months.”

The game’s stability will also benefit from the delay. Battlefield 4 had a notoriously awful launch, with serious issues plaguing the game for months on all platforms. These problems resulted in EA overhauling its testing process, but concerns lingered among fans that Hardline’s launch would also go less-than-smoothly. On the subject of stability, Troedsson says, “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.”

An exact new release date has yet to be announced, and there is no word on what this means for the previously planned fall beta. We’ve contacted EA to find out more.

Do you find this delay an encouraging sign that EA wants to get things right with Hardline? Let us know in the comments.

Chris Pereira is a freelance writer for GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @TheSmokingManX
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