Head of EA Games label Patrick Soderlund talks Frostbite 2 and how the engine will embrace the next generation of consoles, revealing that DICE intentionally developed the engine for PC in preparation for next gen.
While Battlefield 3 looks great across the board in terms of visuals, it’s noticeable that the PC version is still miles ahead. The obvious reason is that developers don’t have to worry about the hardware limitations on the PC considering that almost any rig can be modified to work with their required specs. This is one of the reasons why we see more destruction, bigger maps, more player count, ect. on the PC version of Battlefield 3. That’s not to say that the console version doesn’t hold against it, just that there are clear limitations of what Frostbite 2 engine can do on the current generation of home consoles. However, things should be a little different by the time the next gen PlayStation or Xbox roll around as Soderlund tells Gamasutra, “yeah, I’ll be honest with you – Frostbite 2 was built for the next generation.”
He explains, “we’re going to have to build something that can scale. It doesn’t mean that what you see in Battlefield 3 is the end state. That’s the beginning; that’s where we start and then we go forward. But we have a tech base that makes me feel really confident in how we’re positioned for what’s going to come in the future.”
After all, Executive producer Patrick Bach also told Eurogamer a while back, “If anyone would build a new console today, that would be the result,” referring to Battlefield 3’s visuals on the PC. He continued, “Probably more, because it’s classic PC technology. We know everything about multi-threading now. We know everything about multi-graphics card solutions now. If someone built a console where the specs are that or more, we have the technology to do something. We could port the game to that console tomorrow.”
Concerning, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Soderlund stated that the game was originally going to use the popular and widely implemented Unreal Engine. However, when the team saw Battlefield 3, they instantly changed their minds.
He continued, “we take the philosophy on not forcing tech upon anyone. It was basically a desire from that team, when they saw the results of Battlefield, and they saw the results of what that engine could do at the time. I’m not saying [Epic has] a bad engine — I’m just saying comparing the two at the time it was like, ‘Okay, we can do more of what we want with the Battlefield/Frostbite engine.'”
Do you think the Frostbite 2 engine is a good fit for Medal of Honor: Warfigher? Do you think we’ll be seeing a lot more Frostbite 2 powered games on next gen hardware?