FIFA 17 to Use the Same Game Engine as Need for Speed: Report

The Ignite engine powers EA's sports games. It's a proprietary collection of technologies aimed at making virtual presentations of sport get closer to the real thing, most notably with stellar results in the long-running football game series, FIFA. However this might change with FIFA 17.

According to GameInformer, citing multiple sources within the company, EA is looking to shift from Ignite to the Frostbite engine, which has been developed by Battlefield studio Dice. Aside from the Battlefield series, Frostbite powers a large chunk of EA's games. Most notable of which include Need for Speed, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mirror's Edge, and Star Wars Battlefront to name a few. Furthermore, it won't just be FIFA 17 making the move to Frostbite. In the future, other sports franchises like Madden NFL, NHL, and NBA Live will transition to Frostbite.

"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," the post on GameInformer reads. "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."

Considering how good games like Need for Speed and Star Wars Battlefront looked, especially on a powerful enough PC, it could spell the end of shoddy PC versions of the world's most popular football game. However it remains to see if FIFA 17 loses features in the move to Frostbite, what with development cycles for the series being extremely short and time sensitive.