Battlefield: Hardline, Visceral Games' newest addition to the long-running Battlefield series, has been delayed to early 2015 publisher Electronic Arts announced today, citing further time needing to be spent developing the game.

"Back at E3, we launched a beta for Hardline — we wanted to not only show you the game, but to let you play it for yourselves," Karl Magnus Troedsson, DICE vice president and group GM, wrote on the Battlefield blog. "Millions of you jumped in and had a great time. As a result, the Visceral Games team learned a lot from players about what they wanted in the game. We've been pouring over the data and feedback, and have already been putting a lot of it right into the game and sharing it directly with you."

Originally launching for all systems come October 21st, Troedsson stated that the teams at Visceral Games and DICE want to focus more on multiplayer innovation and incorporate "ideas direct from the community that will evolve the cops and criminals fantasy into a truly unique Battlefield Multiplayer experience." Battlefield: Hardline's single-player experience is also getting some extra love, as is the game's technical stability, which fans of Battlefield 4 would be all too familiar with.

"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," Troedsson said. "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."