Battlefield 6 will include console-only crossplay, meaning Xbox and PlayStation players can avoid those pesky cheating PC players.
Senior console combat designer Matthew Nickerson detailed to IGN the online shooter’s crossplay options, activated with a simple on/off toggle. Turned on, console players will be prioritised before PC players fill a lobby. Turned off, and only console players will be included across both PlayStation and Xbox. The option is turned on by default.
“We’re very confident but also very keen to what crossplay means for Battlefield 6,” said Nickerson. “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.”
Cheating is a major issue across online shooters, with PC players being the most likely to cheat. That’s why console players often prefer to exclude them, if possible.
Technical director Christian Buhl said Battlefield Studios is “taking cheating extremely seriously”.
“Obviously, cheating is much more prevalent on PC than on console, but we are taking a lot of effort, putting a lot of work into prioritising fighting against cheaters,” he said. “We’ve turned on secure boot. We’ve got Javelin, our new anti-cheat system, which is required in order to play.
“So, we’re doing a lot on the PC side to clamp down on cheating as much as possible. We have a whole team within Battlefield dedicated to anti-cheat, which includes engineers, analysts who are reviewing things and banning players, and figuring out what the latest cheats are. We have another whole dedicated team at EA to anti-cheat that we work closely with. That’s what I can say. Now, we can never win against cheaters, right? Cheaters will always be there. It’s a never-ending cat-and-mouse game. I can’t promise that there will be zero cheaters if you’re playing against PC players. That’s just simply not possible, but I can say that we are being extremely aggressive. We see this as critical to the success of – to the health of – the game.”
Console players also use aim assist to balance play with PC players using mouse and keyboard for increased accuracy. But aim assist has been “completely redone” from Battlefield 2042, said Nickerson.
“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.”
It’s all part of the studio’s console-first approach. It’s this that’s led to strong optimisation across consoles.
Buhl explained to Kotaku the team struggled to get the game running on Xbox Series S due to its lack of memory, with levels crashing. As a result, the team has optimised memory usage in the game which has in turn made the “whole game better and more stable”.
Battlefield 6 will release on 10th October across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Just don’t expect a Switch 2 release any time soon.
