News DICE's Frostbite engine goes 64-bit only

DICE architect Johan Andersson has revealed that future Frostbite games will be 64-bit exclusives.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2012/05/23/frostbite-engine-64-bit/1

 

I think they'd be mad to exclude 32 bit versions, though I'd very much like to see a 64 bit version of BF3

 

Finally, something forcing XP lovers to upgrade .

 

About flippin time!

 

I think they're smart not staying stuck in the past and catering to a small minority of numpties.

 

Who exactly would be running a computer capable of running the next Battlefield but with 32-bit Windows? All OEMs have shipped computers with Windows 7 64-bit, enthusiasts have adopted 64-bit Windows for much longer, and any computer with a 32-bit only processor won't have the performance necessary to run the game in the first place.

 

32-bitters make me cringe now. It's 2012 for pete's sake

 

Stuff like this needs to happen. It's about time.

 

Not everyone upgrades at the same frequency as many of the users here. As per Gareth's comment above, the article here : http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2012/05/22/how-old-is-your-has-your-hardware/ says enough. And that's just for steam users, many people do not use steam.

 

Surely this will depend on the spec the next generation of consoles have. If they've <=4GB RAM or run 32 bit OSs it seems a bit pointless.

 

from what ive been hearing the new toy boxes are still 2 generations behind us

 

The steam hardware survey is not a good representation of people who will be buying DICE games in 2013.
A lot of those steam gamers would be people who play CS and other old games that work perfectly fine on a since core Xp machine on 32 bit.
I have steam installed at my parents house and they play the casual puzzle games, they are never going to be playing counter strike or l4d.
This is a good move, it will give a performance boost to any enthusiast that is running 64 bit and has more than 4 gig ram, I personally have had 8 gig for 18 months now.

 

35.14% ? Let's see http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey :

Windows XP 32 bit 14.90%
Windows Vista 32 bit 5.48%

When i add these numbers together, i get 20.38%. Or you consider the items labeled as "Windows 7" and "Unknown" as 32-bit as well ? Because that is the only way you can get up to 35.14%.

And 18% of people can't use DX10. We will stop making DX10 then ? Will we stop making DX11 games then ?

 

This will push people to upgrade their OS, making things better all round. Good on DICE for doing this.

 

Microsoft really pussied out releasing a 32-bit version of windows 7. Luckily most resellers seemed to know better and only use the 64bit version.

 

I would like to point out you can get 64bit xp also, anyone that has bought a cpu since, athlon 64 (not sure when intel started doing 64 bit in desktop computers) will be able to run the OS, but as has been mentioned here, if you don't have support for 64 bit, your computer probably wouldn't play the game anyway.

 

Taking the big players:
Windows 7 64 bit 53.86%
Windows Vista 64 bit 6.28%
Total: 60.14%

Windows XP 32 bit 14.90%
Windows Vista 32 bit 5.48%
Windows 7 14.65% (i.e. 32-bit)
Total: 35.03%

It's not much of a contest, but that is a significant exclusion. Not that I'm saying it shouldn't be done - that's fine by me, more pretty for the rest of us.

 

I must admit I also think you're being a bit rude in your tone faugusztin.

I'm personally not overly bothered since I almost certainly won't be buying whatever game they make, currently using a 64bit W7 I think, not sure what the family is on, but I don't think it's a great idea to make it 64bit exclusive, making people pay more money for a new OS if they don't have one already.