Visceral either like to gamble or are feeling fairly confident about Battlefield: Hardline’s stability on PC. The company has put up an entire article dedicated to how marvellous the game will be on our platform.
It’s written by ‘Gameplay Systems Producer’ Mike Glosecki, who I’m sure is a lovely person. He does try a little bit too hard to prove his PC credentials though, saying things like he “subscribes to the theory that the PC is by far the best gaming platform around.” Sure, it’s true, but in a marketing piece like this it’s always going to come off as a bit artificial.
The section about steps being taken to ensure launch stability actually appears at the end of the piece. Glosecki doesn’t get off to a great start, employing a massive understatement in the sentence “I think we can all agree that Battlefield 4’s stability at launch was less than stellar.” But I guess “completely unacceptable and insulting” is a phrase we’re never going to see on an official corporate blog.
Apparently, Battlefield: Hardline has been “up and running in the multiplayer environment for the last two years with both the development and quality assurance teams playing in daily matches,” which has been helpful in ironing out issues before launch. Glosecki also points to the two betas that have run which, in fairness, do seem to have passed without too many hitches.
It also sounds like Battlefield: Hardline will either launch with, or receive pretty quickly, the same community test environment (CTE) set up on PC for Battlefield 4.
The proof will come at launch on 17 March, when these kinds of statements will either come back to haunt Visceral or be confirmed as fairly accurate.
In terms of the specific benefits of playing Hardline on PC, the article confirms that players will be able to adjust their Field of View settings (though doesn’t give values) and states that the PC will have the “best texture filtering, texture quality, and anti-aliasing.” Resolutions of 1920x1080p “and beyond” are mentioned, which is a bit vague; and an FPS count in excess of 60 will be possible (so, no FPS cap basically.)
