'We wanted to focus on performance': Battlefield 6 developer explains why EA is skipping ray tracing at launch

Battlefield 6: A soldier wearing a tan uniform, including a helmet, glasses, and mask, facing to the side with a sledgehammer over their shoulder while turning to look at the camera. — (Image credit: EA)

Battlefield 6 seems set up to finally eat Call of Duty's lunch this year, after an inconsistent decade or so for the franchise. This is because of a sequence of smart moves around optimisation and a pretty hectic beta. Turns out, in an attempt to ensure better performance, the team have opted to entirely skip ray tracing, at least for the launch of the game.

Speaking to Comicbook.com, Christian Buhl, the technical director for Battlefield 6, said, "No, we are not going to have ray tracing when the game launches and we don’t have any plans in the near future for it either." This makes a lot of sense, and would ease some developer burden when it comes to optimising the game. As Nick pointed out last year, ray tracing is ever becoming the norm: something that is just required to play a game.

Battlefield 6 gun fight with someone being revived — (Image credit: EA)

It is a bit of a departure for the series. Ray tracing has been enabled in many previous instalments, and Battlefield V's ray tracing was something lauded by Nvidia around its launch. Moving away from ray tracing doesn't just change how these games are optimised, but it also changes the art style somewhat.

As someone whose RTX 4070 Super has been a bit afraid of the moment I can no longer run most games on Ultra, I'm okay with Battlefield 6's Ultra requirements only being a little higher than my rig. Minimum spec players reportedly accounted for a "meaningful percentage" of the beta. EA has taken measures to get Battlefield 6 running on even budget rigs from half a decade ago, and, ultimately, I'd take full servers and a healthy community over better reflections any day. Still, it wouldn't hurt to get the option post-launch.

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James is a more recent PC gaming convert, often admiring graphics cards, cases, and motherboards from afar. It was not until 2019, after just finishing a degree in law and media, that they decided to throw out the last few years of education, build their PC, and start writing about gaming instead. In that time, he has covered the latest doodads, contraptions, and gismos, and loved every second of it. Hey, it’s better than writing case briefs.

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