Expanding the Battlefield
The next Battlefield game is aiming to stage some pretty big battles. Thankfully, those battles won’t be cordoned off depending on your platform as Battlefield 2042 will get cross-play, at least within console generations.
In an Electronic Arts blog today, the Battlefield 2042 team confirmed that it’s building in and testing cross-play functionality. Right now, Battlefield 2042 cross-play is expected to work between PS4 and Xbox One, or between PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. (PC and console users can also opt-out from playing together.)
EA doesn’t provide a reason for the generational split, though it’s most likely due to newer-gen consoles and PC having the larger 128-player battles, while last-gen is limited to 64. The team will be testing cross-play out in the upcoming Technical Playtest, which will let a small group of players play on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5 play together.
There’s also discussion of Battlefield 2042‘s cross-progression, which will carry over between Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. Basically, your kit goes with you, wherever you go. That will also include purchases within your copy of the game, according to EA’s blog.
Also confirmed in the blog today is that while Battlefield 2042 will have its bots, you’ll still need to be online to play solo against the A.I. A technical playtest will be hosted later this summer to help test this cross-play functionality, though EA says it is not intended to be the full experience that will be seen in the Open Beta or at launch.
This is some good news overall though, and certainly makes Battlefield 2042 a bit more appealing for playing with various groups of friends. Next-gen consoles have still been hard to get a hold of, and so games with cross-play have offered us ways to still play together, even if PS5s aren’t in stock.
And I’ve really appreciated the games that do take cross-progression into account, though I’m still waiting for some to catch up to the trend. Having this built in right from the beginning means I’m not worrying as much about unlocking everything on every version, or which platform I want to buy my cosmetics on. I can just care about when the next ATV will spawn, so I can drive it off a building into a helicopter, just like in the trailer.
Battlefield 2042 will launch on Oct. 22, 2021 for PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
