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.
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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immanuel_aj 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.Reply -
utgardaloki Not too hilarious. The team tried to get a version closer to PC and last gen consoles up and running. Not the "android version" of it. The Wii U CPU doesn't seem to be up to snuff. And to optimise the engine to function well on an "isolated" (Power PC) platform many developers have doubts about might not be in their best interest.Reply -
illLoGiQ Cause WiiU or anything Nintendo is child's play. Considering Nintendo will not hold a press conference at E3 2013 says alot also. Nothing big to show and opting to show anything if new at smaller events or by way of Nintendo Direct.Reply -
illLoGiQ Cause WiiU or anything Nintendo is child's play. Considering Nintendo will not hold a press conference at E3 2013 says alot also. Nothing big to show and opting to show anything if new at smaller events or by way of Nintendo Direct.Reply -
Cons29 i think they said that they won't have it on wiiU and now they have mobile well because mobile is different. they already have one for console but not yet for mobile, maybe it's not worth it for them to customize one for wii alone. while mobile is a big marketReply -
Reply10815531 said: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.
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.
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kinggraves "Runtime in Frostbite supports a highly scalable model in order to appeal to the diverse array of platforms available on today’s market," As long as it isn't the Wii U. No, this isn't about CPU power. You can troll on about the Wii U all you want, it isn't a PC beast. It isn't $600+ either. It can at least run mobile level games. This isn't because PPC is "too complicated" to write for. Many previous gens have been PPC based and they've coded for it. It's because x86 is too easy to port to. It isn't Nintendo's choice, it's the other consoles choice to switch to the same platform as a PC and make things that much easier. This is a choice they likely made after they knew what was in the Wii U. Sucks being out first, doesn't it? They're willing to port to mobile because the industry thinks mobile is some magical gold mine of customers that want to play Madden on a 4" screen. They don't realize that for every hit mobile game there's a thousand that don't make a dime. The industry ported a bunch of old titles over to the Wii U, expecting a new market on the console to suddenly blossom out of games people ALREADY PLAYED. When it didn't happen they decided Wii U won't make any money. CEOs are too stupid to realize people that wanted to play AC3 and CoD already owned them, and weren't going to rebuy a game they already had. You want results of a decent 3rd party game? ZombiU is one of the Wii U's top sellers. A 3rd party zombie shooting game. Again, no EA on Wii U, nothing of value lost, have fun paying extra for Jedi in every SW game.Reply -
Miharu Basicly, EA think they can make tons of money with mobile.Reply
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.