ea dice
Latest
DICE vows continued support for Battlefield 3 in light of Battlefield 4 announcement
EA officially revealed Battlefield 4 today as a project being developed at the company's Sweden-based DICE studio. Beyond that, however, no one's saying a peep about the game. Lest you forget, three more DLC packs are planned for DICE's last game, Battlefield 3, and that apparently means DICE isn't ready to talk Battlefield 4 just yet."There is no further Battlefield 4 news at this point," reads a post from DICE on the Battlefield 4 subpage. "With the Back to Karkand and Close Quarters expansion packs already out, Armored Kill around the corner, and End Game and Aftermath still on the horizon, we're looking forward to many more hours of gameplay with you, and can't wait to see the stories you will tell through Battlelog and player created videos."With Medal of Honor's 2010 reboot, EA set out to match its competition's annual shooter, Call of Duty. EA's Los Angeles-based Danger Close studio is in charge of EA's Medal of Honor franchise, apparently trading off years with DICE and the Battlefield franchise. The two franchises currently share DICE's Frostbite 2.0 game engine, and Danger Close's next MoH employs DICE's Battlelog system as well. Thus far, EA has yet to best Activision's Call of Duty powerhouse (in terms of sales and critical reception) with its two shooter franchises.
Battlefield 4 announced, beta arrives fall 2013
Update: EA made the news official in a press release just now, confirming a "fall 2013" window for the game's beta.Battlefield 4 is most certainly a game, as EA confirmed this morning via a trailer for this year's Danger Close shooter, Medal of Honor: Warfighter. According to the publisher, pre-orders of Warfighter's "limited edition" get direct access "to the exclusive Battlefield 4 beta" – of course, we've never actually seen or heard of Battlefield 4 outside of a leaked image revealing its existence a few days ago.EA's Danger Close studio is responsible for the Medal of Honor series, though Battlefield developer DICE assisted with the first MoH reboot. DICE created the Battlefield series, and it stands to reason that the Swedish studio will also be behind Battlefield 4. We've reached out to EA for more info.It seems unlikely that this reveal was unintentional, as EA UK marketing man Dan Sheridan tweeted, "Pre-order #MOH Warfighter & get access to #BF4Beta" with a link to the video and preview page. EA's US reps have yet to say a word.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2 lead designer David Goldfarb exits DICE
Having worked on mostly Battlefield games for the past five years, the man who lead design on both Battlefield 3 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2, David Goldfarb, has left EA's DICE studio. "5 years, 4 games. Grateful to have worked with such awesome people on awesome games. Farewell + Onward," he tweeted yesterday afternoon.Goldfarb told Joystiq of his exit, "I was ready to move onto new things and do something different." He wouldn't tell us where he's headed next.Goldfarb's not the first high profile DICE dev to leave the company in the past few years. Gordon Van Dyke left back in 2010; he's now with Paradox Interactive working on a Battlefield-flavored third-person action game from developer FatShark, War of the Roses. The other third of Battlefield's recent dev leadership, Patrick Bach, is currently serving as company CEO while Karl Magnus Troedsson takes paternity leave.Beyond various DLC plans for Battlefield 3, it's unknown what DICE is currently working on. The studio's Frostbite 2.0 game engine is used in several EA properties (including the other first-person shooter from EA, Medal of Honor: Warfighter), and the only other game it has made outside of Battlefield in recent years is Mirror's Edge. Troedsson told us during GDC that DICE has "ongoing plans" to differentiate its game portfolio, but we've yet to see that promise play out. EA Studios president Frank Gibeau has repeatedly noted his interest in a sequel to ME, but we've yet to hear anything more official than that.EA reps didn't respond to request for comment regarding Goldfarb's exit as of publishing.[Image credit: 'jontintinjordan']
Battlefield 3 Premium announced, extends PlayStation 3 DLC exclusivity to two weeks
Battlefield 3's "Premium" membership got officially revealed this morning by EA (via an exclusive Reuters piece), and it confirmed many of the details we already knew about the soon-to-be-launched service. "Premium" costs $50 one time, not to mention a variety of other in-game weapons and dog tags, as well as a handful of "enhanced" Battlelog features (such as resetting stats). The piece doesn't mention getting access to the game's five announced map packs, but that seems like an odd omission considering the $50 asking price. It does note, via EA vp Patrick Soderlund, that Premium offers, "savings since access to content included in the membership package would cost $25 more if it was purchased separately."Additionally, the membership gives users two weeks of advanced access to the variety of unreleased DLC packs – except this perk only applies if you're a PlayStation 3 customer. Much like Call of Duty's adherence to an exclusivity window on DLC for Xbox 360, Battlefield 3 is locked to a similar tryst with Sony's PlayStation 3. This means that users who pay for the Premium service on either Xbox 360 or PC won't get that same level of early access, which is ... pretty bizarre to us.The piece doesn't make clear when the service launches, but the perviously leaked memo and yesterday's leaked trailer indicated it would launch as soon as today. The piece also notes that Battlefield 3 has thus far moved 15 million units. Not too shabby! We expect to hear even more about Premium during EA's press conference this afternoon.Update: Further details of Battlefield 3 Premium have since been officially revealed by EA during today's press conference. Check out all the news right here.
Battlefield 3's next DLC gets up close and personal
As advertised, Battlefield 3's "Close Quarters" DLC takes the scope of the game's multiplayer and shrinks it to roughly the size of a few hallways. That kind of shrinkage can lead to some ... embarrassing situations.
DICE's future plans go beyond the Battlefield franchise
It's been awhile since the last non-Battlefield game from DICE. Sure, the Swedish dev studio assisted with Medal of Honor's 2010 reboot (multiplayer) and provided some tech backup for Need for Speed: The Run (DICE's Frostbite 2.0 game engine powered the title), but otherwise it hasn't made a separate, original property of its own since 2008's critically acclaimed Mirror's Edge. That may be about to change."We also have an ongoing plan that those products should not only be Battlefield," DICE general manager Karl-Magnus Troedsson told us in an interview last week during GDC 2012, referring to the future of his studio. He punctuated his sentence with a quick, "though I cannot say more than that," unfortunately, but it's good to hear that DICE is moving back to development outside of the Battlefield franchise. It'd be nicer to hear that the studio was steadfast in making a sequel to Mirror's Edge, of course, but we'll take what we can for now.
Battlefield 3's lack of DLC: DICE general manager explains
Battlefield 3 launched on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC in late October of 2011. Approximately a month and a half later, the game's first expansion arrived: "Back to Karkand." Aside from a handful of tweaks since, EA's DICE studio has kept relative radio silence. So much so, in fact, that one prominent Battlefield fan site publicly declared its own silence until DICE spoke up (the developer released a missive the following day).It is with this recent history -- now four months since Battlefield 3's last content drop, and another three months before "Close Quarters" is set to launch -- that we approached a recent interview with DICE general manager Karl-Magnus Troedsson. In short, what in the world is taking so damn long?"The reason that we haven't followed up with even more content more quickly, there's a couple of practical reasons," Troedsson told us. "Part of that is that we just need to spend a lot of focus getting the game out. The ambition was to get more packs out earlier, but sometimes you have to prioritize between the base product and what you're doing afterwards." Troedsson also argued that DICE's approach was thematic, not "piecemeal" (Call of Duty's approach), which was a deliberate choice on his studio's part."If you prefer to have smaller piecemeal packs every now and then, you can go with that. We prefer to do something bigger that has a specific theme, that has maps, weapons, assignments, persistent upgrades, all this kinda stuff," Troedsson said. Could his studio have gotten out this content earlier? "Probably," he said, but DICE ran into its own limitations. "Sometimes we have limitations to what we can and can't do."But without any other announced projects, and EA's Danger Close taking responsibility for its own multiplayer section in the coming Medal of Honor game (DICE handled the previous game's multi), it's unclear what other responsibilities are keeping DICE from pushing out Battlefield 3 support content more quickly. We'll just have to assume the majority of the studio is head down on a super secret sequel to Mirror's Edge.Beyond "Close Quarters," DICE has two more content packs announced for Battlefield 3, including "Armored Kill" in fall and "End Game" in winter. And yes, Call of Duty's Elite DLC drops continue monthly.%Gallery-150552%
Battlefield 3: Close Quarters announced for June, two more packs incoming
Battlefield 3: Close Quarters, the first major paid piece of DLC for the game since last December's "Back to Karkand," is coming this June. The expansion includes four maps, 10 weapons and no vehicles -- it's about close quarters, after all.There will be two more expansions for the game following the June expansion. "Armored Kill" will focus on additional weapons, larger maps, and new drivable vehicles. The second pack, called "End Game," features cover art depicting a lunatic holding a knife. That's the extent of what we know about that one so far.The news of this expansion comes at a critical time. Frustrations in the Battlefield 3 community has been bubbling into potential action, and EA has maintained radio silence until now.
Report: Medal of Honor: Warfighter is Danger Close's next game, hits in October [updated]
EA's been teasing the next Medal of Honor for some time now, so it's not a huge surprise to hear more about it on Twitter. Game Informer's Jim Reilly spent the past half hour sharing some info, saying the game is called "Medal of Honor: Warfighter," is arriving this coming October, and runs in DICE's Frostbite 2.0 engine.The info is apparently coming from a copy of OXM, which arrived a bit ahead of EA's intended marketing push, it would seem. Reilly also says the game's multiplayer will be handled in-house by EA Danger Close now, rather than DICE as was the case with 2010's Medal of Honor reboot.Update: The Medal of Honor blog offered a teaser image of the game, confirmed the title, and teased more details in the coming weeks. Boom! See the full image on the other side of the break.
Battlefield 3 dev hiring 'anti-cheat administrator' to stop the evildoers
Are you one of those guys in a helicopter hovering near spawn points in Battlefield 3 (say, an aircraft carrier), wantonly exploiting the game and infuriating players? You may not actually be cheating, but we still think you're the worst.That aside, Battlefield 3 developer DICE is apparently looking to address all cheaters, and not just that guy who ruins the game for everyone with his stupid, stupid helicopter, as the company has posted an ad for an "anti-cheat administrator." The move follows a recent redoubling of DICE's efforts to combat cheating in its latest game release.Said administrator will be tasked with a variety of responsibilities, many of which you'd expect a community liaison to handle, though the list is oddly missing "put up with staggering levels of infantile behavior from legal adults." Can you tell we don't like cheaters?
DICE promises vigilance against Battlefield 3 cheaters
Finding out that cheating has apparently become rampant in Battlefield 3's online multiplayer is somewhat of a travesty, considering how much some members of our staff play it. Neither of our main combatants have ever actually spotted a cheater (at least not in any verifiable way) while playing on Xbox 360, but the game's developer is nonetheless tracking down these nefarious rogues, issuing stat resets and outright bans to offending players across 360, PS3, and PC. The Stockholm, Sweden-based devs at EA DICE "recently banned another batch of several hundred confirmed cheaters," and are only stepping up their efforts all the more as time goes on. The first measure in this initiative will be an addition to Battlelog, one which allows players to report offenders via their online profiles, regardless of what platform they're playing on. With any luck, between the community and DICE, the contingent trying to ruin everyone's online experience will be stomped out quickly.
More DICE employees jump ship to Ngmoco's Swedish studio
After former DICE / EA Easy dev Benjamin Cousins left his former role, we were pretty sure he was on his way to a world bicycling championship. As it turns out, he's keeping his bicycling hobby on the side and running the Swedish branch of Ngmoco instead -- and he's bringing along some friends from his former employer. Senior artist Wille Wintertidh and senior programmers Torbjørn Lædre and Malte Hildigsson, all from DICE, have joined the team, and we don't expect they'll be the last. Cousins announced the hires via Twitter, where he characterized the trio as "fabulous new employees." We're hoping he also threw confetti in the air as he remarked as much.
Battlefield 3 soliciting feedback for gun attachment tweaks via Reddit thread
For most Battlefield 3 players, the huge number of weapon-mounted accessories are little more than filler between the obvious handful of choices that offer the best, effective results. The game's core gameplay designer, Alan Kertz, has picked up on that state and taken to Reddit to solicit advice for tweaking BF3's various gun augmentations. "I'm not promising this will go live, and I'm not promising there will be an update, I'm looking for feedback and a discussion," Kurtz writes, carefully requesting feedback while trying not to overpromise. He says that the goal in said request is to "focus on improving the under performing and under used attachments," but also to identify how to nerf the most powerful attachments. Interested in sounding off? Head over to the Reddit thread and get passionate.
Best of the Rest: Ben's picks for 2011
Battlefield 3 The time I've spent with Battlefield 3 this year is only bested by the many, many hours I've spent stalking dragons in Skyrim. The hours with BF3, however, were distinctly more dense, while I shouted at teammates to provide cover fire, slowly inching towards a heavily-guarded objective, or lead the charge on an enemy base from the driver's seat of a large, mobile, metal death box. It's a crime that Battlefield 3 isn't on our top 10 list, because it's by far the best multiplayer shooter experience available, and it's certainly this year's best (in yet another year with several genre entries, including an Infinity Ward-developed CoD title). The main campaign isn't very good, sure, and the co-op is even less impressive, but the "Battlefield Moments™" you'll experience in multiplayer more than make up for the package's shortcomings. Worried you've been waiting too long and won't be able to compete? BF3 mitigates that with support classes, allowing players of all types to participate. Squad up on Team [JOY]!
12 Days of Joyswag: Battlefield 3 superkit - the game, controller, vault, wall graphics
Another year, another 12 days of holiday giveaways! Between now and Christmas Day, we're doing the one thing that makes us feel truly alive: giving. Specifically, we're giving you fine folks some of the swag we've managed to collect in our cluttered home offices. And the good will and merriment doesn't stop here! Don't forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for even more chances to win! So you're pumped about Battlefield 3 ... but you don't actually have it yet. We understand there may not be many of you out there, but if you fit that description, we've got the giveaway for you. One lucky winner will get Battlefield 3 on either Xbox 360, PS3 or PC, along with a BF3-themed Razer Onza gamepad for Xbox 360 and a Calibur 11 "vault" for your Xbox 360 Slim. Oh, and some Battlefield 3 wall graphics from Walls360.com. It's enough Battlefield 3 stuff to let your friends know you're serious about the game, and to warn members of the opposite sex that you're not ready for committal. Find rules on entry, and pictures of the swag, after the break.
Battlefield 3's 'Back to Karkand' expansion arrives on PS3 Dec. 6, 360 and PC on Dec. 13
As promised, EA and DICE are delivering Battlefield 3's first expansion, "Back to Karkand," in December, though today we learned from the Battlefield blog that there's a specific date: December 6. Given that all of Battlefield 3's expansions will arrive one week early on PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and PC versions of said DLC won't arrive until December 13. If you've missed the variety of videos showcasing Back to Karkand, the pack is composed of four maps from previous Battlefield games, all remade in Battlefield 3's "Frostbite 2.0" game engine. Put more simply: there will be a few more places to murder folks online, as well as a variety of new vehicles with which to do so. The pack will be free for folks who picked up the "Limited Edition" version of BF3 at launch, and will cost $15 for the have-nots.
Battlefield 3 sells through 8 million of 12 million total shipped
In the month of November, EA moved another 3 million copies of Battlefield 3. At least, that's according to numbers revealed yesterday by EA CFO Eric Brown at the Baird Technology Conference in San Francisco (as reported by Game Informer), which has the game selling 8 million units in total across all its platforms out of 12 million shipped. As with most major game launches, both the shipped and sold amounts of the game have dropped significantly since launch, with two million being pushed to retail from EA in the month of November versus 10 million during the first week. The game's first big expansion -- "Back to Karkand" -- is set to be released some time in December, with PS3 owners getting a crack at it one week early.
Battlefield 3 'client update' deploying on PS3 tomorrow, 360 'will follow shortly'
The official Battlefield 3 Twitter account this morning announced plans to launch the PlayStation 3 iteration of its latest title update (dubbed a "client update") for BF3 tomorrow. Additionally, it seems that the Xbox 360 will be getting the same update in the near future, as the post on Battlelog states it'll "follow shortly" after tomorrow's PS3 update. PC players already got the update last week, which improves a variety of issues with the game across campaign and multiplayer. Like with the PC update, the patch notes don't indicate that the the tactical light has been altered, but plenty of other major issues have. For instance, now, if you're holding a SOFLAM (which is, of course, so fly), and an enemy tries running you over, you'll totally live. After the patch? No more! We've listed the menagerie of fixes and tweaks after the break, wherein you can preemptively decide whether or not the patch will "totally break the game."
You're gonna need an extra blowtorch for all the vehicles in Battlefield 3's 'Gulf of Oman' map
With the massive quantity of land and air vehicles being added to Battlefield 3's multiplayer in the "Gulf of Oman" map -- part of this December's "Back to Karkand" DLC pack -- we'd suggest packing two oversized engineer pockets full of blowtorches for all that repairing you'll be doing. Points!
Battlefield 3 patch cooking on PC for this week, consoles to follow 'shortly after' [updated]
Battlefield 3 developer DICE is currently working on a patch for all versions of its just released game, set to improve "polish, stability, weapons balancing, squad control functionality, user interface enhancements, and several feature enhancements that address feedback the community has provided to date." The studio's blog post on the matter also specifically calls out the PC's "negative mouse acceleration" problem as an issue the update will address. It also stands to reason that the tactical light issue and the PS3 digital edition's Battlelog problem will be fixed, but we asked EA for clarification. While the patch will arrive on PCs some time "next week" -- the post was published last Friday, so that's this week -- the bulk of the game's community on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 unfortunately won't see the patch until it gets through certification. DICE estimates that will be "shortly after the PC update." Regardless, more patch info and a launch date is promised for this week, when we'll hopefully hear more solid news about the console patch as well. Update: This post originally stated that the patch was due "next week," though the news from DICE was announced last Friday. We've since updated the post and headline to reflect the accurate launch projection for the PC patch (this week!) and apologize for any inconvenience.
