Battlefield 6: Release date and everything you need to know
Battlefield is one of the grand old dames of the online shooter scene - it's been wowing fans with its huge-scale battles and adrenaline-pumping blend of vehicular and infantry combat for years and years now.
It's also jumped happily around into different time settings, from its origins in the Second World War, back to the First World War, and of course into both modern combat scenarios and even futuristic science fiction.
Now, developer DICE is hard at work on Battlefield 6, the next entrant in the series. We've rounded up everything we know about the next Battlefield game, right here, so that you can stay on top of things. Keep checking back, as we'll update this story whenever new details come out.
Battlefield 6 release date
It's key to stress that, for now, there's not a lot of official information to go on when it comes to the next Battlefield game, including when it comes to its release date. We know a few concrete facts, though - DICE is definitely working on the game, and has been putting more and more of its resources into the project in recent months.
In fact, in mid-2020 both Battlefield V and Star Wars Battlefront II, the studio's two big existing multiplayer shooters, saw end-of-life updates released, which confirmed that content will no longer be produced for either title going forward.
This is, according to those familiar with the studio, partly in order to free up those staff members who were working on the games' content calendars, letting them move over to Battlefield 6 to accelerate matters on the new project. On the one hand, that means it's a work in progress, but on the other, we've had no formal announcement about the game, or any sort of release window indicated.
At the moment, that means that we'd assume the game won't appear before mid-to-late 2021, to give DICE and EA the time to finish it and indeed market it. EA, in fact, indicated on a recent earnings call that it'll launch in the fiscal year 2022, which runs from April 2021 to March 2022, so that's apprently its window for now.
Battlefield 6 setting and gameplay
With each Battlefield game comes a key question - when and where is it set? Given that previous entries have had seriously diverse settings, a lot is up in the air on this front.
However, most of the rumours we've seen point toward a more modern setting. With Battlefield 1 and Battlefield V, DICE went back to both World Wars to explore an earlier form of combat, but the likes of Battlefield 3 and 4 showed years ago that it can excel at modern combat scenarios, too.
Either way, this is a detail that DICE will be guarding closely until it's ready to fully unveil Battlefield 6 - a huge amount of the hype surrounding the game will likely be triggered by when and where it's principally set. We'll keep our ears to the ground on that front.
However, when it comes to gameplay we can make a few more leaps. We know that Battlefield's core formula is unlikely to change, so you can expect big maps, big player counts and vehicles aplenty.
The manner in which the likes of Call of Duty: Warzone have upped the player count to highs of 150 and 200 in recent times also makes us hopeful that we could see some truly huge battles unfold in Battlefield 6, and the extremely limited test footage DICE showed at this year's EA Play looks like it promises just that.
Featuring a huge building collapsing, and whitebox footage of hundreds of soldiers on-screen at once, it's an exciting glimpse of things to come for Battlefield fans.
Since then, we've again heard that increasing the player-count for gamers is a priority at Dice right now, from a leaker who's been proved right a few times before.
Battlefield news; Maps have been designed with 128+ players in mind. But 32 vs 32 will also be a standard playlist.
— Tom Henderson (@_TomHenderson_) August 13, 2020
That's an encouraging idea, and Henderson also went on to say that Dice could be considering whether to add a free-to-play Battle Royale portion to the game, mirroring the successful tactics Activision has used with Call of Duty: Warzone.
World War 3 setting?
A rumour has appeared on Reddit suggesting that Battlefield 6 will feature a World War 3 setting with battles taking place between NATO and Russian forces.
Like other recent Battlefield outings, Battlefield 6 won't have a single-player campaign but instead will have "War Stories" with small, episodic experiences for players to enjoy. The Redditor claims that one of these will see you thrust into the boots of an American soldier fighting off Russian forces in American suburbs, while another will feature a British spy infiltrating Eastern Europe.
In terms of the multiplayer experience, there will be the usual 64 vs 64 player combat with modes including team deathmatch, domination, conquest, breakthrough and grand operations.
Grand Operations in World War 3
The rumours suggest that Grand Operations has been updated for Battlefield 6 and will now take place over a five day period. Each battle in the campaign will take place on a different day and the winning team will have the upper hand on the following day.
Each day of the operation will also take place on a different map. This experience is described for us:
"Day 1: NATO forces deploy on the interstate while Russians paradrop into the mall area "Red Dawn style". The Russians objective is to seize several control points along the way from the mall to the interstate. NATO has to grab a different set of control points along an alternate route on the way to the mall. Teams cannot re-capture points once they are taken by the enemy team. In this first round, NATO manages to capture all the points (or more points) then the Russian team. This then pushes the game to day 2."
"Day 2 the Russian team deploys in the neighbourhood while the NATO team deploys at a newly established F.O.B at the mall. This new F.O.B grants NATO additional vehicles to use on Day 2 while the Russian team has none. The objective in Day 2 for the Russians is to destroy several targets throughout the map. NATO’s objective is to capture a single hill at the centre of the neighbourhood deep behind enemy lines. Say in this scenario, the Russian team wins."
"Day 3 both teams will have a similar advantage again. Day 3 involves more vehicle and team-based play. Each team is given a "command tank" with extra health and armour to defend. Each team also needs to get that tank to a certain location within the map. First one to the location or to destroy the enemies tank wins. Let's say the Russian team wins this Day as well, now they have an advantage on Day 4."
"Day 4 involves NATO defending city hall from a Russian attack. NATO’s objective is to hold out until the timer goes to zero. The Russian objective is to take the control point at city hall. The Russian team is given extra vehicles to complete this task since they won the last two Days while NATO gets nothing. Say, the Russian team wins Day 4 as well. Now they have a major advantage going into Day 5."
"The final Day features a game mode very similar to that of frontlines from previous battlefield games. There are 7 command points in total which can be fought over back and forth. The Russian team would start one command point closer to the NATO base then they would have otherwise since they won the previous 3 days. They would also receive extra vehicles, respawns and have AI air support on call for use by squad leaders. In this situation it is highly likely the Russian team would win however, through great teamwork and tactics, NATO can still pull off the upset and win Day 5 and win that match of Grand Operations. "
It's worth taking all this with a pinch of salt as it's just rumoured at the moment.
Battlefield 6 platforms
Interestingly, at a time like this with the next generation of consoles just around the corner, the question of which platforms something like Battlefield 6 will support doesn't so much concern the new consoles, but the existing ones.
DICE has confirmed that it's making the next Battlefield game with next-gen in mind, which is obvious from the fact that it will definitely release once the PS5 and Xbox Series X are out in the wild. However, it hasn't gone so far as to confirm that this definitely means we won't see Battlefield 6 on current-generation hardware.
That question aside, we know that we'll see Battlefield 6 on PS5 and Xbox Series X, and we'd expect it to take full advantage of the new graphical capabilities of those consoles. DICE has long been a specialist in ekeing out spectacular graphical fidelity from consoles, so Battlefield 6 is likely to be an envelope-pusher on the graphics side of things, and indeed in the realm of sound design too.
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