With Battlefield 2042 looming over the gaming horizon, fans of the series are falling back into their favorite Battlefields in recent years. Battlefield V and Battlefield 1 still maintain an active player base to this day but have they kept up with the most modern consoles?
While the most popular games have always been released on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, only recently have players on different consoles been able to play with each other. In this guide, we’ll talk about cross-platform/cross-play support for Battlefield 5.
Battlefield 5 does not support cross-platform play. That means PlayStation can only play with PlayStation, Xbox with Xbox, and PC with PC. Thankfully, Battlefield 2042 has already confirmed cross-platform support. The feature will hopefully carry into the future of Battlefield and gaming in general.
Some players may be relieved to know there’s no cross-platform support. The feature does come with its fair share of ups and downs. For starters, console players have always lamented playing with PC players. Unless they’ve mastered the art of bumper-jumper, there’s almost no competition in more aggressive lobbies as far as first- and third-person shooters are concerned.
There’s also Call of Duty: Warzone’s gross hacking problem that still plagues one of the most popular battle royales ever. Hackers only exist in the PC realm, so it’s fair to say those console players would like to avoid them. Minor differences like FOV sliders, frame rates, resolution, and graphics cards also pit the two modes of gaming against each other, with PCs edging out consoles most of the time.
On the flip side, cross-platform play, made mainstream by Fortnite in 2018, allows friends on different consoles to group up and play together. Many gaming groups have been divided and reformed based on console preference. Now, with cross-platform games, everyone can play together.
Thankfully, Battlefield V is backward-compatible between current-generation and last-gen systems. That means you can run your PlayStation 4/Xbox One version of Battlefield V on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Those lucky enough to have purchased a current-gen console, which is still tricky to do, will want to check out Battlefield V on current-gen systems. The game looks and runs a lot better and is maybe a taste of what Battlefield 2042 has in store for us.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.