After playing Battlefield 6′s open beta last month, I used to be impressed by how nicely it carried out on console. And photographs of the beta working on an Nvidia 1060 GPU, an almost decade-old card at this level, additional impressed me. So once I lately talked to a number of the devs about BF6, I used to be curious how the group made it run so nicely, they usually defined it was about not pushing consoles too exhausting and at all times optimizing throughout improvement.
During my video call with Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl, I requested if he felt like the present era of consoles was tapped out and wanted to get replaced or in the event that they nonetheless had some efficiency to squeeze out of them. He instructed Kotaku that whereas he at all times appears like “there’s more room to improve performance,” he doesn’t count on devs to “double frame rates” in future PS5 and Xbox Sequence X/S video games at this level. And with Battlefield 6, the studios engaged on it weren’t even attempting to push these consoles to some theoretical breaking level. As an alternative, the purpose was at all times to make a web-based FPS that ran very nicely.
“We also were intentionally not trying to push super hard on [PS5/Xbox Series X/S,]” mentioned Buhl. “We didn’t want to push to the edge and fail. We wanted to make sure that we had an experience that we could optimize, that we could get to the point where it was going to run reliably at 60 frames per second, or, you know, over 80, whatever settings you preferred. And that was our focus, right? Like, get stuff in there, get it performant, and then add [more].”
Buhl admitted that previously, builders engaged on Battlefield video games had a unique method. Typically groups would “build a bunch of cool shit and then try to make it work.” This time round, that wasn’t the case, and Buhl instructed me that in improvement, Battlefield 6 needed to “constantly be working; it had to constantly be performant.”
“Obviously, it’s not like we’re 100 percent hitting our targets throughout development. But every time we [dropped] too low, we put performance optimization efforts in place, paused work, [and said], ‘You can’t add stuff until we get this optimized,’” defined Buhl. “So that we could kind of make sure that at the end, we weren’t trying to do this giant lift of taking it from 30 frames to 60 frames, or something like that. We were taking it from, like, 55 to 60, right? And that’s a much more feasible effort.”
The continuing debate round online game efficiency
Battlefield 6 on consoles does nonetheless use upscaling tech. Buhl confirmed to Kotaku that on PS5 and PS5 Professional the sport makes use of PSSR. And on all consoles, FSR is out there too. Nevertheless it’s clear the devs had been centered intently throughout improvement on transport a recreation that ran nicely irrespective of the place you performed it, even when that meant slicing again visuals or results.
The subject of online game optimization has develop into a scorching one following the discharge of Borderlands 4 final week. Many declare the extremely anticipated looter shooter is poorly optimized on PC and console, with gamers complaining about having to make use of low settings and DLSS to run the sport on beefy rigs. For some extent of comparability, BF6 is fairly playable on a 1060. Borderlands 4 is very much not. That card is under the minimal PC specs for each video games.
In my expertise on each PS5 and PC, Borderlands 4′s efficiency has undoubtedly disenchanted me. Particularly on PS5, the place some others and I’ve run into a problem the place the sport’s framerate drops decrease and decrease as you play longer and longer. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has pushed again on these criticisms, claiming the sport may be very nicely optimized for what it’s and has recommended some gamers must decrease settings. And in the event you aren’t joyful, you possibly can simply return the game and get your money back.
Battlefield 6 is out on October 10 on PS5, Xbox Sequence X/S, and PC. EA instructed me the sport will assist 60FPS on all platforms, even Xbox Series S, and on some machines, just like the PS5 Professional, the sport can exceed that framerate.
