Just because EA DICE is focusing all its manpower and resources on the upcoming Battlefield 4 title on current generation and next generation platforms doesn’t mean that it has forgotten all about the handheld sphere. Quite the opposite in fact, as EA is planning a “high-end” Battlefield game for mobile platforms.
As revealed via EA Labels president Frank Gibeau in an interview with The New York Times, DICE is moving ahead into the future of gaming and how EA is now ready to make that transition from the console to the handheld.
Already on most major consoles with plans to hit the next wave with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, there's still one place left for Battlefield to go - mobile, and the transition from big to small screen isn't holding them back. “You can play Battlefield on a tablet in commander mode," said Gibeau. "We are working on a mobile game of Battlefield that will be high-end and high-performance. It’s our bet that we can successfully pull that off.”
“But we’re embarking on something no one has ever done before — to get these games to inter-operate between platforms. Will it work? It already has in some cases. Will it work for all franchises? Not all franchises will make the transition. Battlefield might be a little harder.”
No matter how you feel about a mobile Battlefield, it's important to remember that this is not the first time that this kind of a jump has been considered by the company.
Back in May, EA had published a website for its Frostbite engine, and text on the website mentioned the existence of a certain something called Frostbite Go. EA described it as "a mobile division empowering EA game developers with Frostbite's proven excellent workflows and features to bring true Frostbite experiences to all major mobile platforms."
But that’s not where DICE’s ambitions with Frostbite Go ended. Later, executive vice president of EA Games Label Patrick Soderlund also confirmed that the company is trying to bring "something dramatic" to the mobile space with the engine.
“We think that we can push the boundaries on mobile as much as we're pushing the boundaries on console and PC in the long term. So this is the first Go — version 1.0. Versions 2 and 3 we're going to start making games on Frostbite Go that will be featuring things that you've seen in the regular Frostbite code, like destruction and those types of things. We think we can do something dramatic there, with the mobile sector, and make real games on those machines," Soderlund told IGN back in September.
Earlier, when asked about a transition to multi-platform in a much larger sense that doesn’t only relate to the Battlefield franchise, Gibeau picked up the example of Disney and stated that the company does a great job of distributing its various properties across different mediums and platforms, and that they're "doing the same thing here with our interactive properties.”
Nonetheless, EA DICE is currently prepared to release the upcoming Battlefield 4 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.
