MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
This year’s FIFA instalment will be the first built on the Frostbite 3 engine, developer EA Vancouver has announced.
The football series made the leap to the freshly-built Ignite engine in 2013, alongside the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One consoles.
Ignite was touted as boasting improved AI, crowd reactions, weather effects and smoother character animations and interactions, dubbed ‘True Player Motion’.
Despite this, the engine initially only supported console platforms, waiting until 2014’s FIFA 15 before arriving on PC.
EA has now confirmed that FIFA 17 will run on Frostbite 3, joining series including Battlefield, Star Wars Battlefront, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Need for Speed in using DICE’s engine.
FIFA is actually the second major EA Sports property to transition to Frostbite, as EA Tiburon’s Rory McIlroy PGA Tour, released last year, used the tech.
Yet to make the move are EA’s Madden NFL, NHL, and NBA Live franchises.
Some of the benefits of Frostbite highlighted by EA are its more efficient loading times and quality of outdoor environment rendering, with specific boons in FIFA 17 reportedly including corner flag movement (such as when affected by wind), higher-fidelity crowd members and dynamic weather effects. Ignite’s ANT animation system was previously integrated into the tool during the development of Battlefield 3 in 2011.
“Frostbite unlocks a whole new world of possibilities for the FIFA franchise and its fans,” said VP and executive producer David Rutter.
"We have never been as excited as we are today about the future of football and the experiences we are going to deliver in FIFA 17.”
