In the same investor call, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen revealed that DICE is apparently ahead of its internal schedule for Battlefield 6, confirming that the game is coming this Holiday season, with a reveal in Spring. 'Battlefield 6 could be the definitive mil-sim sandbox shooter that harks back to the very best of Battlefield.' That 'if', of course, is as big a conditional as the towering high-rise that sits precariously at the centre of Siege of Shanghai. If DICE and EA live up to what they've been promising, Battlefield 6 could be the definitive mil-sim sandbox shooter that harks back to the very best of Battlefield, while also pushing the series forward with the innovations made available to it in the next-generation. Every building in a map could be explorable, DICE's exceptional sound design could be rendered even richer by 3D audio, and players could boot up the game and be dropped into the frontlines within a matter of seconds, rather than minutes. Skyscrapers could topple over organically, rather than as part of scripted events, with some rumours suggesting entire cities could be turned to rubble over the course of a single match. Snipers could be able to spot players from greater distances, with no 'pop-ins' or loss in detail to character animations and textures when looking down their scopes. That sounds a little techy, so let's try and illustrate that with some examples of what it could mean for Battlefield 6. The supercharged SSDs of the PS5 and Xbox Series X should, in theory, allow DICE to push the capabilities of their physics and rendering systems in the Frostbite engine without worrying about any consequential effect on ability to stream in assets or maintain a consistent framerate. But with the jump to next-gen, which is prioritising the gains made in speed and performance over graphics, that remaining red tape is gone. Battlefield's ambition has long been constrained by the limitations of the console hardware, whether that's having to halve its 64-player count in Battlefield 3, or capping framerates and draw distances on Battlefield 5.

Yes, it's not a huge amount to go on, but every new piece of information revealed so far is hugely promising – that latter detail in particular. The project is also apparently returning to a present day setting, doubling the player count to 128, and utilising some of the next-gen horsepower afforded by the PS5 and Xbox Series X. While those comments are as wishy-washy as you'd expect from a exec at a shareholder meeting, they do appear to corroborate the rumours we've heard about Battlefield 6 up until now, which is supposedly scaling up the series' theatres of conflict to a level that hasn't been seen in the franchise since Bad Company 2.

Battlefield 1943 dday