DICE: The lines between PC and Consoles will blur

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Producer Gordon Van Dyke reveals a future filled with platform integration

Written by Andy Griffiths, 04 December 2009

In the second part of our exclusive interview with the Producer of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Gordon Van Dyke has revealed why his team at DICE are bringing the sequel to the PC, despite some apprehension from a small minority of PC gamers.

"When we brought out the original Bad Company it was focused on the console and as time went by we thought, why not bring this game to the PC? We also started to realise that there's a huge amount of people who play consoles and PCs, or used to play PC and have since moved onto 360," continued Van Dyke, "so lets start to go more into that realm and produce a game that can be enjoyed by the core on both platforms."

Mr Van Dyke also recognises that what each platform needs does vary slightly, but that difference is getting smaller as time goes on.

"You'll start to see a blurring of things that separate PC from console and the past notions of you can't do that on PC that's a console thing! People are beginning to wonder, why not? I play consoles, are you saying that if I play consoles then I can't understand, grasp or manage that system?"

PCGZine Issue 39 For our latest Battlefield coverage, click here to download PCGZine Issue 39 for free.There's no doubt that PC gaming has lost many gamers to consoles and we think that Bad Company 2 represents an easy transition for many to come back to PC gaming. There's no doubt that the line is blurring with some console shooters offering dedicated servers in the past, like Frontlines: Fuels of War and others, like Unreal Tournament 3, offering mod support on PS3.

Not to mention implementation of services like Facebook, iPlayer, Netflix, Twitter and other practices which used to be only associated with the PC.

"As things move forward, not only with DICE, I think you're going to see a blending of those things that were centric to PC coming more to console players."

Some people may read the previous quote from Mr Van Dyke with an understandable sense of dread, but as technology on the consoles becomes more advanced, it's inevitable that gamers expectations will merge.

Hopefully this will mean that cross-platform online play will be finally enabled en masse, as there are plenty of 360 players who we'd like to put in their place!

Battlefield coverage available in PCGZine Issue 39 - click here to download it for free!

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