We may be on the brink of creating history with the arrival next generation consoles later this year, but that doesn’t take away anything from the fact that most gamers will continue pursuing their gaming pleasures on the likes of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. While many developers are gearing up to release their forthcoming titles on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, companies like DICE – preparing Battlefield 4 – are still looking ahead to make sure that their new games are rendered even better on current generation consoles, compared to its predecessors.
Speaking with OXM, Executive Producer Patrick Bach revealed how the company is making sure that Battlefield 4 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are up to the same level of quality as their counterparts on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and that the company hasn’t forgotten about the masses that will still play out the new titles on the current generation consoles.
On asked whether it’s a tricky situation for the developing team to balance out the output of the game on current and next generation consoles, Bach stated: “It gives me a flashback to Battlefield 3. We had that problem even back before the next gen consoles, where we made a game that looked amazing on the PC - the better the PC, the better that game looked - and then you had a game that looked amazing on PS3 and Xbox 360, but it didn't look as good as on PC, and people kept nagging us about that.”
“It was like, you should compare it to other games on the same platform. And people said, 'OK but still - why doesn't it look as good as on PC? You don't care about the consoles.' Well, we're pushing your hardware as hard as we can, and I'm quite certain that we'll get that this summer as well - because we are pushing the PC, we're pushing the Xbox One and we're pushing the PS4, and also making sure that the Xbox 360 and PS3 software looks amazing, way better than it did for Battlefield 3,” he told OXM.
Bach added that no matter how hard the company tries to balance out the output for the game on different generation platforms, people still bring up comparisons. “We'll still get the comparison videos, where somebody will judge us based on that, rather than comparing us to other games on the platforms.”
“You could take the coward's way out, and just set the bar at Xbox 360 and PS3, and make it so that all games look the same on all platforms, but that's not who we are. We want to do our best with the hardware," he concluded.
Battlefield 4 is currently scheduled to release for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC on Oct. 29 in North America and Nov. 1 in Europe, with versions for PS4 and Xbox One arriving in Q4 2013.
