EA's Battlefield 3 has only been on the market for a little over two weeks and the publisher is already talking about the fourth Battlefield installment. Heck, the first DLC isn't even available and the publisher already has its dollar-sign sights set on an unannounced Battlefield 4.
According to Eurogamer, EA president Frank Gibeau confirmed the fourth installment during a keynote presentation at the University of California. The revelation isn't shocking to say the least given that Battlefield 3 has already sold five million copies since its release. But his comment was tweeted by keynote attendees nonetheless.
"There is going to be a Battlefield 4," he said.
Of course, an EA spokesperson performed a little PR cleanup immediately after the news escaped Twitter, saying that "Frank was speaking broadly about the Battlefield brand - a brand that EA is deeply passionate about and a fan community that EA is committed to."
Weeks ago just before the launch of Battlefield 3, Swedish developer DICE said that it hoped to develop the fourth installment sometime in the near future. "This feels like day one now," executive producer Patrick Bach said. "It's exciting. The whole Frostbite 2 thing has opened up a big landscape ahead of us so we can do whatever we want."
DICE claims that the new Frostbite 2 engine was designed to "future proof" the studio: meaning that the engine will even work on the next Xbox and PlayStation console thanks to its PC-based roots. "We know everything about multi-threading now," Bach added. "We know everything about multi-graphics card solutions now. If someone built a console where the specs are that or more, we have the technology to do something. We could port the game to that console tomorrow."
Does that mean we might see Battlefield 4 as a launch title for Xbox Next/720/Loop in 2013? Even more, will gamers be able to save the game on one Microsoft platform and resume on another (Microsoft platform)? Now that would be cool.
