The setting has not yet been announced, but it is currently assumed that the new Battlefield will take place in the present or the near future.
After the talks about the next Battlefield were dominated by leaks and rumors, there is now new messages from the developer himself. In a letter, Oskar Gabrielson, the general manager at developer Dice, addresses the fans. He writes:
“We now test the game every day and take care of the fine-tuning, the balance and make it the best Battlefield we can. And I can tell you it’s a bold move. The game has everything we love about Battlefield and takes it to the next level. Large-scale battles with surprising moments and absolutely groundbreaking destruction. Battles that involve more players than ever before. And all of this is made possible by the power of NextGen consoles and PC. ”
Sure, there’s a lot of marketing talk in there. But what exactly do these statements mean? We summarize the most important statements here and put them in the context of what we have learned so far about Battlefield 6:
- Development progress: Battlefield 6 is already in the playtest phase and we are already working on fine-tuning and balance issues. That should give fans hope for a round launch. Instead of the usual two years, the title is in development for three years. Projects like new DLCs for Battlefront 2 or the next Need for Speed have been postponed especially for BF6.
- More players, bigger maps: Gabrielson confirms again that for the first time in the series we are on the battlefield with more than 64 players at the same time. Over 100 soldiers could already be seen in the first tech demo. We expect that the number of vehicles will increase and the cards will be bigger this time.
- Groundbreaking Destruction: The fact that the destruction is again emphasized should give fans hope for a new technical leap in physics, as we have already experienced in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. In the tech demo, an extremely realistic collapsing high-rise had already been seen.
- But only for NextGen: With his last sentence Gabrielson seems to confirm what has been speculated for some time: Battlefield 6 appears as a pure NextGen title and leaves PS4 and Xbox One behind. On the one hand, this is risky because so far only a few NextGen consoles are available. On the other hand, this step clears the way for technical progress that would otherwise be slowed down by the limited computing power of the old platforms. And that’s exactly what they are planning to do (number of players, destruction).
2021 will be an exciting year for the studio and the largest team to date will be working on the new Battlefield part for consoles and PC, Oskar Gabrielson continues. In addition to the main Swedish studio, Criterion (BF5: Firestorm, Need for Speed) and Dice LA are also involved.
In addition, the EA Frostbite Labs team in Gothenburg is working on the technical framework of the new game. Battlefield 6 will be officially presented with a trailer in the spring.