While EA, along with the four studios working on Battlefield 6—Ripple Effect, Criterion, DICE and Motive Studios—have been revealing plenty of information about the upcoming shooter, in a new interview with IGN, technical director Christian Buhl and senior console combat designer Matthew Nickerson have now provided details about the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of the game. Among the biggest details revealed had to do with how cross-platform matchmaking would work in the game’s multiplayer modes.
Nickerson reiterated that the console versions of Battlefield 6 would try to match with other console players when it comes to filling up matches. Much like it had been confirmed earlier, the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of the game will only start looking for PC players if it’s having trouble finding enough console players to fill up the match.
“When it comes to preference input, we have just what it sounds like: If you’re a console player, we are looking for other console players in a set time frame, and then if we need to fill up the lobby more, we will look towards PC players,” he explained. “We’re very confident but also very keen to what crossplay means for Battlefield 6. We’ve gone the extra mile and put in a lot of effort in terms of balancing the inputs, understanding where the inputs lie [not just] in terms of relationship to general play styles but general performance of what they’re good at and maybe what they lack.”
He also spoke about how developing the title also involved plenty of fine-tuning made to aim assists for controller users. In the interview, Nickerson confirmed that the aim assist system from Battlefield 2042 has been completely redone. The system now has an aspect dubbed internally as the “combat triangle”, which pits the three main combat modes – infantry vs infantry, infantry vs vehicles, and vehicles vs vehicles.
“We’ve completely redone aim assist from our Battlefield 2042 version,” he said. “We’ve added aim assist for what we call our ‘combat triangle’ now – and that’s infantry versus infantry, infantry versus vehicles, and vehicles versus vehicles – to give that cohesive experience if you are on controller, compared to, maybe, something that’s a little bit easier on keyboard and mouse. So [we’re] very dedicated to crossplay, and we’re trying to nail it across multiple vectors when it comes to crossplay. It’s just such an important aspect for us and for Battlefield 6.”
Further in the interview, Buhl confirmed that the PS5 and Xbox Series X will allow players to pick between Performance and Quality modes. With Performance mode, Buhl explained that the studio is aiming for an average frame rate of 80 FPS or higher. Quality mode, on the other hand, focuses on still offering at least 60 FPS while also offering higher visual fidelity and overall performance.
The Xbox Series S, on the other hand, will only offer one mode of running the game, which aims for 60 FPS at 1080p. The developers had previously discussed their efforts in optimising Battlefield 6 for the less powerful console earlier this week.
Battlefield 6 is in development for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and is slated for release on October 10.