‘Star Wars Battlefront’ And ‘Mass Effect’ Dev Intends To Push Graphical Limits In 2016

Mass Effect 4 Concept Art — Concept art for the next “Mass Effect” game Electronic Arts (https://www.facebook.com/masseffect)

Despite offering only the briefest glimpse at early in-engine footage for “Star Wars Battlefront,” fans are understandably excited at the prospect of playing a “Battlefront” game created by the team behind the “Battlefield” franchise. While what fans have seen of “Battlefront” looks incredible, DICE and Frostbite technical director Johan Andersson wants to ensure that games arriving during Holiday 2016 will look even better.

Andersson took to Twitter to state his intention to list Windows 10 and DirectX12 as a minimum requirement for PC gamers who intend to play Frostbite Engine-powered games. This generation, the Frostbite Engine has powered EA titles such as “Battlefield 4,” and “Dragon Age: Inquisition and “Battlefield Hardline.” “Star Wars Battlefront” will be the first Frostbite-powered title released exclusively on PC and current-gen consoles, providing a good indicator of what the engine is really capable of.

“Would like to require Windows 10 & DX12/WDDM2.0 as a minspec for our Holiday 2016 games on Frostbite, likely a bit aggressive, but major benefits. I do think the Windows 10 adoption within core gamers will be really quite fast, and Microsoft is helping with their upgrade program,” he said in a series of tweets picked up by Gamepur.

Andersson’s reference to Microsoft helping with their upgrade program refers to the Redmond tech giant’s decision to make Windows 10 a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8.1 users. As reported by The Verge, any device running the aforementioned older versions of Windows will be able to upgrade for free to Windows 10 within the first year of release, a program likely to speed up adoption rates of the new OS.

Not much is currently known about EA’s 2016 Holiday release plans, so it’s difficult to say which games will benefit from the potential switch to DirectX 12. A report by Polygon from early this year states that while some features of DX12 will be exclusive to newer cards, some DirectX 11.1 cards will take advantage of the driver and software tech implemented in the new software API.