A Battlefield 6 Feature Is Already Being Planned for Future Games

The team at Battlefield Studios is already planning on bringing back a big feature for Battlefield 6 in future games. Battlefield 6 is one of the biggest games set to release later this year and fans are extremely excited to get their hands on it and thankfully, they’ll be able to later this week via the open beta. The Battlefield series is an important franchise for the shooter genre given its scope and scale. There’s no other game operating quite at its level with high player counts, vehicles, and destruction. Of course, that has sometimes led to its downfall as previous games have crumbled under their own ambition, but Battlefield 6 looks like it may overcome the odds.

Battlefield 6 got rave previews last week after its multiplayer reveal. Speaking personally, I loved the game and can’t wait to play it again. Even after playing 8 hours of it, I feel like I have only seen the tip of the iceberg with what’s possible in Battlefield 6. While there are still some things to tune before launch, I was surprised to see how polished it was. A big reason for this is the extensive playtesting that EA and Battlefield Studios have been doing with the game. Battlefield 6 has been doing large scale playtesting since the beginning of the year with fans in the community to gain tangible feedback on the game and it appears to have been a valuable asset.

Battlefield 6‘s Battlefield Labs Playtests Will Return in Future Games

I spoke with David Sirland, Senior Producer at DICE, and Alexia Christofi, Producer at DICE, last week in Los Angeles and was able to ask them a bit about Battlefield Labs, the playtest program for the game. Sirland specifically was really enthusiastic about Labs and has been trying to get it implemented for years on past games. I asked whether or not they plan to use this feature in future games and the answer was loud and clear.

“Absolutely yeah, this is a development model I’ve been a proponent for for many years,” said Sirland. “I mean, since the CTE (Community Test Environment for Battlefield 4), that was like the sort of test case, so we needed something to be able to [identify] for Battlefield 4 what needed fixing, it really needed large scale testing to be able to validate when we hit the market, when netcode was better and you know, all that that stuff.

“In this case, really I’ve always wanted it in all the games I’ve worked on do it before launch because it should enable us to push further to make make things even better, and to have a really stable release. I think this is probably the best way to, you can’t guarantee, but to at least get close to a guarantee of a stable performance release on release day, is to have actually released it on another setup and broken it a couple of times and learned from that and you get the team sort of into a well oiled machine of releasing things as well. Because once we’ve released this, we’re all going to patch it and have more things and more maps and stuff over time.”

Even though the game is right around the corner from launch and a big public beta is happening this week, Battlefield 6 is planning more Battlefield Labs test imminently. The team just announced a battle royale mode for Battlefield 6 and promised it will be available on Labs very soon, potentially in the coming weeks following the beta. It has been a great system and although it has led to leaks, it has resulted in a really strong game. The team even shared a deep dive post of how they have utilized all of their feedback from Labs to improve Battlefield 6.

Whether other developers have the courage to risk showing an unfinished game with the potential of leaks remains to be seen, but it’s definitely a really smart way to make a game with fans in mind. It’s unclear if this will be adopted at other EA studios, especially since teams like Criterion and Motive worked on this game, but it would be smart. Perhaps if Star Wars Battlefront 3 finally happens, there will be extensive playtesting for it.

Battlefield 6 launches on October 10th on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC.