DICE is bring a new interface to the Battlefield series, and it starts with Battlefield 4.
There’s been a fair bit of attention on the Battlefield series lately, what with the announcement of Battlefield 1 and all the free DLC EA has been giving away. DICE is taking advantage of this attention to roll out a new feature for Battlefield 4 that will be coming to Hardline and the upcoming Battlefield 1 as well: a brand new user interface.
The new UI will let players form squads before a game, and will also let them jump between Battlefield games. That means you can go from a BF4 map to a BF1 map without leaving the new UI. The official official blog post announcing the feature says that it is a “more relevant and fine-tuned experience that quickly gets you to the things you want to do.”
The new interface is currently in beta testing with a small group of BF4 players, and will be coming to the game in the next few months. The same interface will launch with BF1, and be added to Hardline shortly thereafter.
There’s no word on what this new interface will mean for the future of Battlelog, but EA has closed down their official Battlelog forums, so it’s likely that we could see the long-running browser-based launcher being sunset completely. DICE Engineer Julian Manalov tweeted a confirmation that this would be the end of a browser-based launcher, saying, “No web browsers involved anymore.”
Although gamers have gotten used to Battlelog, those of you that were around when it launched with BF3 will remember how much it was maligned, and you can bet that many of the people who disliked it are quite happy with this news.
A launch date for the new UI has not been set, but I would think that we’ll see it at least a month or two in advance of the launch BF1, just so they have time to iron out any bugs that pop up.
