DICE Pushing Next-Gen Hardware as Hard as it Can With BF4

It would be easy for EA and DICE to just set Battlefield 4’s technical bar at what can be done with the Xbox 360 and PS3 and call it a day, but that’s just not what the studio is about. Battlefield 3 was a better looking product on the PC than it was on consoles, and the sequel will be a more complete package on next-generation hardware than anywhere else. Executive producer Patrick Bach thinks this is the best way to push hardware, even if it has caused some issues with fans in the past.

“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,” he told OXM.

"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.”

It’ll take a 12 GB install to make the Xbox 360 version of the game run smoothly, but DICE doesn’t feel the limitations of a single platform should hold back others.

"People will still bring it up," Bach continued. "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."

Expect Battlefield 4 to launch on current-gen platforms Oct. 29, with PS4 and Xbox One releases coming in November.