A new Battlefield game is coming to Sony’s PS5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X, developer DICE has confirmed. And it’ll be released in 2021.
The developer told IGN that it’s "focused on the future of Battlefield," with it looking towards the next-generation of consoles while support for its last two games, Battlefield V and Star Wars Battlefront II, winds down. We already knew a Battlefield game was in the works and it would come to next-generation consoles, but there was no confirmation that it would come to both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X, or when it would launch.
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Given the Xbox Series X and PS5 are due to launch at the end of the year, one might think a new Battlefield game would be released earlier to coincide with the launch of the new consoles. But EA, DICE’s publisher, said it would be a little premature for it to do so.
"Bringing out Battlefield [in 2020], where the new console base is fairly small, doesn't really give justice to the potential of the title, and so that's part of our driver in moving the title into fiscal [2022],” EA said. “Fiscal 2022” for EA basically means 2021 in real-world terms.
There’s still no word on what type of setting the next Battlefield game will take place in. The games have already spanned World War I, the Second World War, modern times and Battlefield’s take on what future war settings might look like. We’d not be surprised to see the next Battlefield game stick with the World War II setting of Battlefield 5, only with a tighter multiplayer experience and more varied maps and game modes; a battle royale mode is almost certainly likely.
But EA has said the next Battlefield game will tap into the power of the next-generation consoles, noting it will be "targeting new innovation that will be enabled by next-gen platforms”. That’s likely to mean ray-tracing rendering on the PS5 and Xbox Series X, something Battlefield 5 had but wasn’t supported on the current console generation.
A new Battlefield game will be in good company on the next-generation consoles as it’ll join the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 in getting enhanced features for both of the upcoming machines. And as the year rolls on we expect to see more games revealed for the PS5 and Xbox Series X, especially as both consoles are expected to have a big showcase in May.
