EA Opens New DICE Studio, Confirms Frostbite Go Engine
EA's new DICE studio based in Los Angeles will focus on Star Wars games. Meanwhile, DICE is currently working on a mobile version of its popular engine.
Following the announcement that Electronic Arts would develop and publish new games based on the Star Wars franchise, the gaming giant is reportedly opening a new DICE studio in Los Angeles to solely work on those specific titles. The studio will open its doors by the end of 2013 with a staff of around 60 developers. The main DICE headquarters will continue to be stationed in Stockholm, Sweden.
Company general manager Karl-Magnus Troedsson told The Wall Street Journal that the new L.A.-based studio will go head-to-head with local rivals Infinity Ward and Treyarch, both of which are owned by Activision. "There is an extreme talent pool over [there] that we want a part of," he added. "It's no secret that our main competitor is there."
The new DICE studio has already started hiring, and even pulled talent in from the Medal of Honor team. Currently, it's unknown what this studio will be working on alongside the main DICE studio in Sweden, but the Star Wars game will be powered by the Frostbite 3 engine, the same foundation that will serve up Battlefield 4 this fall.
In addition to the new studio, EA confirmed on Wednesday a mobile version of the Frostbite engine called Frostbite Go. "One of our most exciting current projects is called Frostbite Go, a mobile division empowering EA game developers with Frostbite’s proven excellent workflows and features to bring true Frostbite experiences to all major mobile platforms," states the Frostbite website.
A NeoGAF member also uncovered other comments on the Frostbite page, including a confirmation that Frostbite games are currently in development for current and future platforms including mobile devices. "Runtime in Frostbite supports a highly scalable model in order to appeal to the diverse array of platforms available on today’s market," the site reads. "Efficiency in both our runtime memory and runtime performance are both key factors to enabling code and data systems to deploy content to diverse targets from Xbox 360 and PlayStation 4 to iOS and Android."
The Frostbite team located in Stockholm is split into six groups, one of which is working on the Frostbite Go engine. The other five include Audio, Core Systems, Physics, Production Systems and Rendering teams.
The Frostbite engine was originally created by DICE back in 2006 and first used in 2008's Battlefield: Bad Company. A second version of the engine, aka Frostbite 1.5, made its debut with Battlefield 1943 in 2009. Frostbite 2, the first major upgrade to the engine, went live in 2011 with the launch of Battlefield 3. EA revealed on Tuesday that Battlefield 4 will be the first title to use the fourth-generation Frostbite engine this fall.
The reason why it isn't on the WiiU isn't because of the lack of horsepower, it's because porting it just wasn't worth the amount of effort they had to put in. The WiiU is supposedly too complicated.
They don't invest in Wii U because they won't make a tons of money.
It's not a question of hardware or horsepower, it's just a money issue.
They play politics and like always they lie to us BIG TIME.
6immanuel_aj , May 16, 2013 10:08 AM x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x .
That's hilarious! First they say that they could not get Frostbite running well on the WiiU, and now they said they're going to develop a Frostbite version for mobile and other platforms "from Xbox 360 and Playstation 4 to iOS and Android." Clearly not mentioning the WiiU here indicates that they don't intend to publish any games for it on the FPS side.
Actually its because when Nintendo was looking for a partner to help them with online EA was hoping to ram Origin down their throat, but Nintendo saw that spyware is bad and decided against it, so in turn EA said that theres going to be no garbage sport rehash games or DLC microtransaction riddled half finished games on the WiiU, such a tragic loss for Nintendo..