FIFA 16 will mark the end of the Ignite Engine for the franchise, with developer EA Sports instead opting to use DICE’s Frostbite Engine in FIFA 17. The Frostbite Engine is the foundation for heavy-hitters such as Battlefield, Star Wars, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Need for Speed, and Mirror’s Edge, a fairly impressive repertoire.
The report, via Game Informer, reveals that FIFA, Madden, NHL, and NBA Live sports game will be transitioned to the Frostbite Engine over the course of the next few years. In FIFA’s case EA CEO Andrew Wilson suggests that this will allow FIFA 17 to take a “major leap forward in personalization, immersion and competition”.
It will be interesting to find out what those buzzwords actually mean. Could a ‘major leap in personalization’ mean that we’ll be able to customize teams and their stadiums more, like the PES franchise allows? Or could it be more to do with scanning our own faces into the game – a feature that EA Sports have dipped their feet into in the past? The likelihood is that we won’t have to wait long to find out as we’ll hear more at E3 regarding FIFA 17’s upgrades and improvements at the publisher’s EA Play event.