EA’s sports games are powered by the Ignite engine. It is a collection of technologies that is aimed at making virtual enactments of sport get closer to the actual thing. It is most notable in the long-running football game series, FIFA, with great results. However, this might just change with the new FIFA 17. GameInformer, while citing multiple sources from within the company, said that EA is looking to shift from Ignite to the Frostbite engine, which is developed by Battlefield studio Dice. Apart from the Battlefield series, Frostbite is known to power a large chunk of EA’s games. Most notable of all the games it powers is Need for Speed, commonly known as NFS Series, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mirror’s Edge, and Star Wars Battlefront. FIFA 17 isn’t the only one to make the move to Frostbite. In the future, other sports franchises like Madden NFL, NHL, and NBA Live are also expected to switch.
The post on GameInformer reads, FIFA 17 isn’t the first EA Sports game to use Frostbite tech; 2015’s Rory McIlroy PGA Tour was built on the platform as well by EA Tiburon. During its press blitz for PGA Tour, EA touted the engine’s prowess in creating outdoor environments and cutting load times between holes. The transition should also be aided by the fact that DICE already integrated the ANT animation system component of the Ignite engine into Frostbite during the development of Battlefield 3.
Knowing how good games like Need for Speed and Star Wars Battlefront looked, especially on a powerful PC, it could mean the end of shoddy PC versions of the world’s most popular football game. However it remains to see if FIFA 17 loses some features during the move to Frostbite. The development cycles for the series are extremely short and time sensitive.