Battlefield 6 Ditches PS4 and Xbox One, Unlocking Next-Level Destruction

EA and DICE are taking a big swing with Battlefield 6, and yeah, the pitch is basically: remember the chaos you loved? More of that. Huge combined-arms battles on land, sea, and in the air. Buildings and scenery that do not politely stay standing. It is not out yet, but based on what they are showing, this looks like the series trying to get its groove back after four years of work.

The big call: no PS4 or Xbox One

Here is the inside-baseball move that explains a lot of what you are seeing: Battlefield 6 is skipping last-gen consoles entirely. That sounds like marketing, but it is actually a pragmatic tech decision. DICE is not spending time contorting the game to fit decade-old hardware, and that raised the baseline for everything from memory to CPU headroom. In other words, they are building for the ceiling instead of constantly shoring up the basement.

"Maybe the only magic trick is that we are not on the PS4 or Xbox One any more," Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl told PC Gamer. "We have kind of raised the floor of what we have in terms of memory and CPU speed, and obviously raising that floor helps with improving performance overall... I do not think there was a magic bullet. It was just a lot of testing, a lot of iteration, a lot of work."

Yes, plenty of players still live on those older systems, but that hardware is more than 10 years old. Keeping those versions alive would slow the team down and, bluntly, make the new game worse. That is the trade-off.

Destruction is not a buzzword here

The other piece of this is Frostbite. It is DICE's engine, and it was born inside Battlefield. Destruction is not a bolt-on feature; it is a core system. Buhl straight-up says the grind has been testing destruction, re-testing it, optimizing different spots, and doing that loop over and over. There is no secret sauce here, just lots of time and a tech stack that is built for buildings to become confetti.

What that last-gen break buys them

• More headroom for bigger, denser battles across land, sea, and air without the old hardware bottlenecks
• Heavier, more systemic destruction that does not need to be scaled back for PS4/Xbox One
• Fewer compromises in performance thanks to higher baseline memory/CPU on current platforms
• The ability to focus testing and optimization on one set of targets instead of two generations

Going head-to-head with Call of Duty

Timing-wise, Battlefield 6 is landing opposite Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. That is tough competition no matter how you slice it, which is why this needs to feel like a leap, not a shuffle. If they hit something that evokes the jaw-drop moments from Battlefield 4, that is a win for everyone who misses that flavor of chaos.

PC players: about those specs

DICE has also locked in the final PC system requirements. One telling note: they say a substantial number of beta players did not meet the specs. Credit where it is due, though — they actually broke the requirements out by target FPS, resolution, and settings, so you can see exactly what you need to hit your personal sweet spot. Not glamorous news, but useful.

Bottom line: ditching last-gen is not a magic fix, but it let DICE chase the top end again. If the full game matches the ambition of what they are showing, Battlefield 6 might actually feel like Battlefield again.