EA’s Frostbite engine headed to iOS and Android as Frostbite Go

By Michael Rougeau May 15, 2013

frostbite3 — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Electronic Arts inadvertently revealed that its Frostbite game engine is headed to mobile devices as Frostbite Go, GamesIndustry reports. The new engine popped up as a mention on the “History” page of EA’s new Frostbite website. “One of our most exciting current projects is called Frostbite Go, a mobile division empowering EA game developers with Frostbite’s proven excellent workflows and features to bring true Frostbite experiences to all major mobile platforms,” the page says.

“Runtime in Frostbite supports a highly scalable model in order to appeal to the diverse array of platforms available on today’s market,” reads another page on the site, titled “This is Frostbite.” “Efficiency in both our runtime memory and runtime performance are both key factors to enabling code and data systems to deploy content to diverse targets from XBOX360 and PlayStation 4 to iOS and Android.”

So that tells us the platforms, but it’s odd that EA made no formal announcements before dropping news of Frostbite Go’s existence. Though as GamesIndustry points out, Frostbite program manager Kristoffer Benjaminsson at Battlefield developer DICE tweeted about the mobile engine back in April, and then again more recently. He revealed that the Frostbite Go name applies to the five-person DICE team working on the engine as well as the engine itself. His tweets also seem to indicate that EA has not been particularly concerned about keeping the project secret.

Another Frostbite developer revealed on Twitter last week that Frostbite 3, the console version of DICE’s engine that is set to debut with Battlefield 4 later this year, will not run on Nintendo’s Wii U. As a result, EA’s upcoming Frostbite 3-powered Star Wars games likely won’t appear on the Nintendo system.

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Michael Rougeau

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Mike Rougeau is a journalist and writer who lives in Los Angeles with his girlfriend and two dogs. He specializes in video…

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