Frostbite (game engine)

Frostbite is a game engine developed by DICE, designed for cross-platform use on Microsoft Windows, seventh generation game consoles PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, eighth generation game consoles PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch and ninth generation game consoles PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, in addition to usage in the now defunct cloud streaming service Google Stadia.

The game engine was originally employed in the ''Battlefield'' video game series, but would later be expanded to other first-person shooter video games and a variety of other genres. To date, Frostbite has been exclusive to video games published by Electronic Arts.

History

Frostbite 1 and 1.5

The first iteration of the Frostbite game engine made its debut in the 2008 video game, '' Battlefield: Bad Company''. The engine was developed with an HDR Audio and Destruction 1.0. HDR Audio allowed differing sound levels to be perceived by the player whilst Destruction 1.0 allowed players to destroy the environment. A newer version of Frostbite would later be employed in '' Battlefield 1943'' (2009) and '' Battlefield: Bad Company 2'' (2010), which would come to be known as Frostbite 1.5. In the upgraded game engine, it was now possible for players to cause enough destruction to entirely demolish structures. This version was also employed in the multiplayer aspect of ''Medal of Honor'' (2010), becoming the first video game outside of the ''Battlefield'' series to run on Frostbite.

Frostbite 2

On 25 October 2011, Frostbite 2 made its debut in '' Battlefield 3''. Frostbite 2 has upgrades such as deferred rendering and real-time radiosity and Destruction 3.0, which made falling debris potentially lethal to the player. Further changes to the engine included the addition of suppressive fire and disabling vehicles before destroying them. For the first time in a game that was not a shooter nor developed by DICE, Frostbite was brought to the '' Need for Speed'' series with 2011's '' Need for Speed: The Run'', which was released on 15 November. It took a year for EA Black Box, the developer of ''Need for Speed: The Run'', to re-purpose the game engine for driving instead of shooting. On 21 May 2012, DICE rendering architect Johan Andersson said that future personal computer video games running on Frostbite would have to be played on 64-bit operating systems. On 23 October, '' Medal of Honor: Warfighter'' became the first game of its series to feature Frostbite in both single and multiplayer. On 26 March 2013, '' Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel'' became the first third-person shooter and last video game to employ Frostbite 2.

Frostbite 3

In March 2013, ''Battlefield'' executive producer Patrick Bach announced that Frostbite 3 would not support the Wii U, saying that "the Wii U is not a part of our focus right now." The third generation of Frostbite made its debut in '' Battlefield 4'' on 29 October. In the updated engine, the environments became much more dynamic upon the actions of the players and Destruction 4.0, which was known as ''Levolution'' in ''Battlefield 4''. On one map of ''Battlefield 4'', it was possible for players to destroy a dam, causing the entire map to be flooded by water. On 13 November in San Jose, DICE's Frostbite engine technical director Johan Andersson announced that future Frostbite games and an updated version of ''Battlefield 4'' would be powered by Mantle, a low-overhead rendering API co-developed by AMD and DICE. However, due to lack of interest and support, Mantle was phased out, with 2015's '' Battlefield Hardline'' being the last game to implement it. On 15 November, '' Need for Speed Rivals'' became the second game of its series to use the game engine and the first since the upgrade to Frostbite 3.

First released on 25 February 2014, '' Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare'' became the first game in the ''Plants vs Zombies'' series to run on Frostbite. On 18 November, the game engine made its debut in the action role-playing genre of video games with '' Dragon Age: Inquisition''. On 17 March 2015, '' Battlefield Hardline'' became the second game of its series to run on Frostbite 3. In November, '' Need for Speed'' and '' Star Wars Battlefront'' were both released under Frostbite, the 2016 '' Rogue One X-Wing VR Mission'' expansion for the latter game exclusive to the PlayStation VR and being the first VR title to use the engine. On 23 February 2016, '' Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2'' was released on the game engine. On 7 June, '' Mirror's Edge Catalyst'' became the first action-adventure game to run on Frostbite. On 21 October, '' Battlefield 1'' became the third title of its series to be released under the third generation of the game engine.

On 21 March 2017, '' Mass Effect: Andromeda'' was released on Frostbite. On 10 November, '' Need for Speed Payback'' was released, running on the game engine; a week later on November 17, '' Star Wars Battlefront II'' was the last game of 2017 to be released on Frostbite. 2018's '' Battlefield V'' runs on the Frostbite 3 engine. In 2019, ''Anthem'', '' Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville'', and '' Need for Speed Heat'' were all released running Frostbite.

In 2020, '' Star Wars: Squadrons'' became the second VR-compatible game to run on Frostbite, with the PC version of the game bringing VR support on PC to the engine (following its use un the aforementioned ''Rogue One X-Wing VR Mission'' expansion). On Xbox Series X and S, the game received support for high frame rates and 4K resolution, alongside visual improvements. In February 2021, a Nintendo Switch version of '' Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville'' was announced, marking the first Frostbite title on a Nintendo console.

2021–present

In November 2021, '' Battlefield 2042'' was released for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5, using a new version of Frostbite 3. The new engine version, developed specifically for ''2042'', took 18 months of development time. In October 2022, '' Need for Speed Unbound'' was announced to be using the Frostbite engine, marking developer Criterion Games' first game using the engine. The game was released on 2 December 2022 utilizing the ''Battlefield 2042'' version of Frostbite.

The studio head of Ridgeline Games, Marcus Lehto, confirmed that the next installment of the ''Battlefield'' franchise will be developed on an upgraded version of Frostbite. The 2023 remake of '' Dead Space'' also utilizes Frostbite. In December 2023, a new logo for the engine was unveiled, and Electronic Arts announced it would retract its original strategy of developing every game under its label in Frostbite. '' Dragon Age: The Veilguard'', which uses another version of Frostbite, was released in 2024.

EA Sports titles

Since the release of '' Rory McIlroy PGA Tour'' in 2015, Frostbite has seen use in EA Sports' annual sports titles, which previously used the Ignite engine. Following the introduction of the engine to the ''FIFA'' with the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC versions of '' FIFA 17'' in 2016, the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Switch releases (the latter beginning with 2017's '' FIFA 18'') were dubbed "Legacy Editions", instead using the last-generation Impact engine last used in the console versions of '' FIFA 14'' and excluding new features in later titles, such as ''The Journey'' campaign and new features like the UEFA Champions League mode (introduced in '' FIFA 19'') from those editions. Also, EA Sports FC Mobile (formerly FIFA Mobile) for Android and IOS still using the last-generation Impact engine due to the limitations of the machine's storage medium, and EA Sports FC Online (formerly FIFA Online 4) for Microsoft Windows still using Ignite Engine last used in the console versions of FIFA 16 because of hardware requirements. The Nintendo Switch versions of the titles would receive feature parity, offering an experience similar to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with the release of '' EA Sports FC 24'' in 2023, with the only exclusion being the lack of cross-platform play with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Following the ''FIFA'' transition, more EA Sports franchises transitioned to the engine. With the release of '' Madden NFL 18'' in 2017, the '' Madden NFL'' series transitioned to Frostbite; 2021's '' NHL 22'' marked that series' transition to Frostbite; the 2023 reboot of the ''PGA'' series, '' EA Sports PGA Tour'', uses the engine; the '' EA Sports UFC'' series received the engine with '' EA Sports UFC 5''; and the '' EA Sports College Football'' series transitioned to the engine with '' EA Sports College Football 25'' in 2024. As of 2025, the only EA Sports franchises to not run on the engine are the '' Super Mega Baseball'' series and Codemasters' '' F1'' and '' WRC'' racing game series, the latter two franchises using the proprietary Ego engine and Unreal Engine 4 respectively.

Enhancements for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S began in 2020 with the release of '' FIFA 21''. Improvements featured graphical enhancements to take advantage of the newer hardware. Notably, the PC versions of ''FIFA'' did not receive these enhancements until '' FIFA 23'' in 2022.

Frostbite Labs

In May 2016, EA announced it had formed Frostbite Labs, a dedicated research division focusing on the development of the Frostbite engine as well as its use in future technological innovations such as VR experiences, neural networks and machine learning. Frostbite Labs is composed of a team of 30 to 40 developers operating in two offices, one in Stockholm, Sweden and the other in Vancouver, Canada.

Criticism

Frostbite is notorious for having well-publicized difficulties, including its complexity. This led to numerous reports of development issues surrounding Frostbite titles; a majority of these issues came with the engine's usage at BioWare, which has criticized the engine for its aforementioned complexity, which made adapting common elements found in role-playing games to the engine rather difficult. Much of these criticisms stemmed from Electronic Arts pushing for the usage of Frostbite in as many titles as possible when developers were already familiarised with a certain game engine, like the Eclipse Engine (for ''Dragon Age''); however, in 2023, Electronic Arts announced that developers were now able to develop games on any game engine. Bioware used an improved version of Frostbite for '' Dragon Age: The Veilguard'' in 2024.

Development issues

With EA pushing for the usage of Frostbite 3 in many of their developers' titles, refacilitating the engine for BioWare's 2014 title, '' Dragon Age: Inquisition'', proved difficult for the developer; the title's executive producer, Mark Darrah, said about the engine that "...at launch we still didn’t actually have all our tools working. We had our tools working enough." Prior to moving to Frostbite, the ''Dragon Age'' series utilized the Eclipse Engine. The move to Frostbite 3 resulted in BioWare cancelling a piece of downloadable content for '' Dragon Age II''; that game received a divided audience reception, with BioWare aiming to improve on the next ''Dragon Age'' game. Adding new features to the engine for use in ''Inquisition'' proved difficult, as the engine was primarily used in first-person video games. However, issues initially faced by the development team were solved as BioWare and DICE started to cooperate better, and the engine allowed the ''Inquisition'' art team to develop extensive worlds in a short time. However, with the release scheduled for late 2014, the team resorted to extensive crunching.

With Visceral Games being tapped to publish the ''Star Wars'' title '' Project Ragtag'', the company was occupied with the development of '' Battlefield Hardline''; after the latter game was released, ''Ragtag''s development suffered from many setbacks, one of them being the usage of Frostbite and their difficulties adapting it to third-person shooters. By 2017, ''Ragtag'' was ultimately cancelled and Visceral shuttered, with resources being shifted over to the then-impending development of DICE's ''Star Wars Battlefront II''.

In 2017, '' Mass Effect: Andromeda'' suffered from multiple issues at launch due in part to the complexities of Frostbite and a troubled development. BioWare had previously faced these issues before during the aforementioned development of ''Dragon Age: Inquisition'' and would continue to do so during development of ''Andromeda''. In 2019, sources within BioWare claimed that Frostbite's complexity had also contributed to difficulties surrounding ''Anthem''s development. Former BioWare general manager Aaryn Flynn acknowledged these issues in an interview in November 2019.

Due to being developed in 15 to 18 months, developers of ''Battlefield 2042'' from DICE had issues with Frostbite.

Security issues

In June 2021, tools used in the development of Frostbite, a majority of them regarding development of ''FIFA 21'' including its source code, were leaked; the contents were released on August 2, 2021.

Games using Frostbite

Notes

# Excludes PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 (up to 2018's ''FIFA 19'') and Nintendo Switch "Legacy" editions

References

External links

Frostbite's official homepage

DICE's official homepage

Frostbite Rendering Architecture (slides)
from Johan Andersson, Rendering Architect, DICE, 2009.

DICE Publications
(archived)

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