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Over the past few years DICE ‘s Frostbite engine has grown from the visually astounding backbone of the Battlefield franchise to the premiere graphics engine for publisher Electronic Arts .
. In fact, the publisher is so deeply invested in Frostbite — now in its third iteration — that they are building almost all of their upcoming next-gen games on it.
However, although we know that Frostbite 3 will be, or was, used for some premiere titles like Battlefield 4 , Mirror’s Edge 2 , and BioWare’s next Mass Effect title, we don’t know the full extent of the engine’s reach — specifically, how many Frostbite 3 games EA has in development. We assumed Frostbite was a pretty integral part of EA’s next-gen plans, and if a quote from DICE’s Technical Director Johan Andersson is any indication, that is very much the case.
According to Andersson, DICE is working on more than 15 different games that utilize the Frostbite 3 engine. Some of those games are in-house at DICE, while others are in development at EA’s other internal studios like BioWareand Ghost Games.
Of those 15+ Frostbite 3 games, only a handful have been officially announced to the public in some capacity or another. Here are the games we know of so far:
Battlefield 4 Untitled Mass Effect GameWith only about 6 games known – it’s unclear if Battlefield 4 fits into Andersson’s tally – that leaves at least 9 games EA has in development using Frostbite 3 that we don’t know about. It’s safe to assume that whatever Star Wars games both BioWare and Visceral Gamesare working on would presumably use Frostbite, but EA has not made any official announcements regarding those two games.
There’s no denying that Frostbite 3 looks gorgeous, especially on PC and next-gen hardware, so it makes sense that EA would want to double-down on the engine in the future. EA has actually done a similar thing with FIFA ‘s Impact Engine, which many franchises now use for some physics and character collisions.
That isn’t so say all upcoming EA titles will be using Frostbite 3, though, just a large portion of them. The highly anticipated multiplayer shooter Titanfall , which EA is publishing, uses its own engine and looks to be one of the company’s biggest next-gen releases.
Still, 15+ games suggest Frostbite 3 (and even beyond) is the future for EA, and if games like Battlefield 4 are any indication then gamers are looking at titles that will only continue to look better.
What other games would you like to see developed using Frostbite 3? Do you think it’s a smart of EA going all-in on Frostbite, or should they broaden their horizons, so to speak?
Source: OXM