While this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, Electronic Arts’ CFO Blake Jorgensen has revealed that the company designs games to run on high-end PCs and then scales back for the console versions. This topic of discussion was brought up at the UBS Global Technology Conference. Jorgensen explained that since now all of Electronic Arts’ internally developed games use the Frostbite Engine, that they are able to scale back without much issue.
“You won’t see much margin upgrade at all,” explained Jorgensen. “We build all of our games to the highest possible spec, which is typically a high-powered PC, and as the consoles come in, [which] may not be the highest spec, we may actually dummy down the console product to meet the spec of the console. In a world where the console looks more and more like a PC, that’s good for us.”
Clearly this strategy is working for Electronic Arts as Frostbite Engine games like Battlefield 1 and Star Wars Battlefront are some of the best looking games on the PlayStation 4 and PC. As we enter a phase of iterative console design, such as the PS4 Pro, console owners will only continue to see even better performing, and looking, games from Electronic Arts. In the end, everyone from PC owners to console players are rewarded.
Have you been impressed with Electronic Arts’ Frostbite Engine on PS4? Let us know what you think of the game engine that powers Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, and EA’s beloved first-person shooters.
(Source: PC Gamer)
