PC, PS4 and Xbox One players will have full access to Battlescreen, Battlelog assistant producer Jesper Nielsen confirms.
Battlescreen won’t work on the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Battlefield 4, however PC, PS4 and Xbox One users will have full access to live Battlescreen on their smartphones, tablets and PCs. Essentially Battlescreen offers live maps, stats, loadouts and server browsing.
The main reason for the system being next-gen exclusive is that Battlelog is now entirely web-based. “Battlelog is powered by the web, and that has a lot of implications. There are a lot of different things you can do, things you can do faster, rather than building stuff in native code,” Nielsen said.
“It’s going to be a lot easier for us to actually update things from the in-game Battlelog than would otherwise be the case. You’d have to do patches normally; here we can actually do things almost by the flick of a finger,” he added.
Neilsen also mentioned that many players stopped using Battlelog with Battlefield 3 on PS3 and Xbox 360 because they forgot their origin passwords and did not want to be bothered digging them up for one game. Therefore, from now on Battlelog on PS4 and Xbox One will therefore use a QR code rather than an Origin log-in.
“It might sound trivial, but it’s actually making something that might be problematic for people super simple,” he said.
Neilsen also said DICE is experimenting with more functions for Battlelog and Battlescreen: “To be frank, it will stand its real test once we get it out to the players and see how they use it, both when they play and don’t play. That will teach us a lot and help us innovate even more in this field.”
“We don’t have the answers to all the questions in this space yet, so it’s definitely a bit of an experiment, but we’re very confident with some of the steps we’ve taken to provide a truly meaningful and valuable second-screen experience.”
Battlefield 4 is scheduled for a launch on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 at the end of October, next-gen versions will depend on system launches.
