DICE Pushes Launch of Ray Tracing Title Battlefield V to November
October won’t be quite as busy a month for video games as we thought. Electronic Arts has delayed Battlefield V, the latest installment in the at-least-semi-realistic shooter franchise, to November 20. The official reason is to give DICE more time to polish the game in response to player feedback, but the later release will also make sure Battlefield V isn’t directly competing with the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 or Red Dead Redemption 2.
DICE general manager Oskar Gabrielson said in today’s announcement that Battlefield V’s delay is supposed to let the studio “take the time to continue to make some final adjustments to core gameplay, and to ensure we really deliver on the potential of Tides of War.” (More on that later.) That requires a longer gap between the open beta, which starts on September 3, and the official release. Apparently one month is long enough.
Gabrielson said “tens of thousands” of players participated in Battlefield V’s closed alphas or played the game at E3 and Gamescom. He expects “millions” to play in the upcoming open beta. That’s a lot of feedback to respond to. It’s also sure to expose problems with the game’s underlying infrastructure that some players might not even notice. Responding to feedback before release instead of after is probably better PR.
It doesn’t help that Battlefield V is both a departure from the Battlefield formula and a return to form. The game will feature a battle royale mode—much like Black Ops 4 and countless other titles—but it also brings the setting back to World War II. Combine that with the same emphasis on large-scale gameplay, destructible maps, and “realistic” mechanics and it’s not hard to see why DICE and EA think Battlefield V will revitalize the series.
Gabrielson said:
“We believe we have one of the best Battlefield games ever on our hands. A game that will deliver on an emotional journey through the return of unseen single player War Stories, a deep multiplayer experience, Battle Royale, along with our new live service, Tides of War - a journey across multiple theaters of WW2 and designed to keep our community together.”
But EA and DICE aren’t the only companies with something riding on Battlefield V. The game has also been presented as the poster child for Nvidia’s support for ray-tracing technology, which is an important selling point for its Turing GPUs. We don’t know if wanting to improve the game’s ray-tracing support contributed to its delay. But either way, this is bad news for Nvidia’s expensive new graphics cards. It’s not like there are an abundance other ray-trace-ready games ready to take its place.
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At least not in the ray-tracing game. For everyone who doesn’t plan to buy an RTX card in the coming weeks, though, Black Ops 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2 will be ready to fill the void left in Battlefield V’s absence. That’s assuming those games aren’t delayed as well. At this point you’re probably better off consulting a Ouija board than official release dates. Maybe the open beta will be enough to convince people Battlefield V is worth the wait. We should find out on September 3.
Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.
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DookieDraws This is fine with me. This extra time will allow them to polish up the game a little more. I'm sure it won't be perfect at launch, but from what I have read, they are listening to us players.Reply
I am a long time BF fan, and I plan to play this one as well. -
uglyduckling81 I hope Nvidia has a benchmarking app developed for their RTX release so independent reviewers can do fair, honest and definitely not skewed benchmarking, because there isn't going to be a single title available on release day to use all those RT cores.Reply
RIP early adopters. -
TerryLaze
They do a very decent job of compiling a list with GPU centric software to show off their products so I'm sure they will have software ready at launch to put the hardware through it's paces.21280847 said:I hope Nvidia has a benchmarking app developed for their RTX release so independent reviewers can do fair, honest and definitely not skewed benchmarking, because there isn't going to be a single title available on release day to use all those RT cores.
RIP early adopters.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/gpu-accelerated-applications/catalog/ -
x_elusiv_x BF4 was a great game. The latest sucked. Does BFV go back to BF4 modeling? If it doesnt...not interested.Reply -
BulkZerker "I hope Nvidia has a benchmarking app developed for their RTX release so independent reviewers can do fair, honest and definitely not skewed benchmarking, because there isn't going to be a single title available on release day to use all those RT cores.Reply
RIP early adopters."
Not gonna happen. If nVidia does a benchmark it will use their implementation of Ray tracing, not the one implemented by DX12 (the open source version.)
The bottom line for all of this is, do you want to play games @1080p with Ray tracing or would you rather a higher resolution; on a card that costs over $700? -
xxxlun4icexxx @X_ELUSIV_X,Reply
From what I've seen, no. At least the trailers I saw it looked pretty similar model-wise to BF1. The only thing that I've heard that may be similar to bf4 is time to kill and a few other things. -
jimmysmitty 21279784 said:This is fine with me. This extra time will allow them to polish up the game a little more. I'm sure it won't be perfect at launch, but from what I have read, they are listening to us players.
I am a long time BF fan, and I plan to play this one as well.
I don't even think that is the reason. Their pre-order numbers are trailing Black-Ops and RDR2. I assume they are moving it to try to boost those numbers.
However there is a lot of backlash. People didn't like the first trailer and then the guy running it made some not so bright comments that didn't help at all. Normally if your fans, the people that buy your game, say they don't like something you do your best to fix it. Yes not everyone will be happy but this is more than just a feew.
Maybe preorders will go up with a November release. or they will still be just as low. Time will tell. -
bigdragon Does it still take several thousand hours to unlock everything? I was a big fan of Battlefield before it became Unlockfield. Haven't touched the franchise since BF3 demanded second job-levels of commitment.Reply -
xxxlun4icexxx 21292806 said:Does it still take several thousand hours to unlock everything? I was a big fan of Battlefield before it became Unlockfield. Haven't touched the franchise since BF3 demanded second job-levels of commitment.
I don't think BF1 was bad at all for unlocks. I mean, to get certain camos yeah it takes a while but as long as you play a good amount you'll get the weapons pretty quick.