EA develops games for PC first, scales back for consoles

PC comes first with EA games, and then console versions are scaled back--at least that's what EA says.

@DeekeTweak

Published Nov 17, 2016 4:11 PM CST
Updated Nov 3, 2020 11:57 AM CST

1 minute & 8 seconds read time

With so many developers delivering broken PC ports and optimizing console titles instead, some EA games like Battlefield 1 run quite smoothly across the board. EA says that it develops its games to favor the highest-possible hardware out there, which just so happens to be enthusiast-grade PCs.

EA develops games for PC first, scales back for consoles | TweakTown.com

"We build all of our games to the highest possible spec, which is typically a high-powered PC," Electronic Arts' CFO Blake Jorgensen said at the UBS Global Technology Conference.

"As the consoles come in, [which] may not be the highest spec, we may actually dummy down the console product to meet the spec of the console. In a world where the console looks more and more like a PC, that's good for us."

Jorgensen also says that this is one of the main reasons why EA now builds its games with DICE's newest Frobstbite 3 engine--instead of optimizing "25" different engines, EA devs now only have to scale a single engine.

Considering PC hardware has eclipsed console hardware sales in 2016, you'd think more devs and publishers would follow EA's footsteps and focus on delivering optimized PC ports.