Battlefield on mobile - What would it look like?

Battlefield 1 recently impressed on console and PC with its sprawling, ambitious yet accessible massively multiplayer FPS action.

It goes without saying we'd love to see it on mobile in the same way that we want every top videogame series to come to mobile. But when it comes to the practicalities of making the mechanics of a certain game work on your smartphone, Battlefield is an altogether trickier proposition than, say, Zelda.

The list of hurdles that a mobile Battlefield game would have to negotiate is considerable. Battlefield games are first person shooters, which are inherently tricky to pull off on mobile due to their complex controls.

They have massive open levels with destructible scenery that would stretch smartphone hardware like no other FPS. Plus, they're massively multiplayer, with around 64 plays taking part in many games. Real time multiplayer isn't exactly a massive mobile concern when mobile network connections still leave so much to be desired.

That's not to say that there isn't hope for a mobile Battlefield. There are several indicators and precedents out there that offer an idea as to what such a game might look like.

Let's tackle what appears to be the most obvious hold-up here. Battlefield games are huge system hogs, as we stated above, due to their sprawling and destructible levels, and the dozens of players running around in them.

Battlefield on mobile couldn't be done at a fundamental technical level, right? Wrong.

Indeed, two years ago Frostbite Stockholm (Frostbite being the engine that powers the Battlefield series) announced that its had managed to get parts of Battlefield 4 running on iOS. While this was far from a complete experience, the porting team said that they were "pleasantly surprised" by how well it ran, and that there was "performance to spare".

Just to reiterate, this was running on an iPad (going by the above image they provided) that was at least two years old. This would mean that, at best, it was an iPad Air 2 with an A8X CPU running the game, and more likely an iPhone Air.

The new iPhone 7 runs on an A10 Fusion CPU. This has a GPU that's three times faster than the plain A8 chip that sits in between those two iPad Air models in performance terms.

What this means is that modern iOS hardware is more than up to the task of running a faithful version of Battlefield - and that's not even taking into consideration the changes and optimisations that would inevitably be made for a dedicated mobile version.

Of course, just because a game is technically possible on mobile doesn't mean it should necessarily be made. We've all played games that were patently not well suited for mobile play.

Many would say that this is the case with Battlefield, and we have a certain degree of sympathy with that view. While there are good FPS games on mobile, even the best still don't feel native to the platform.

But there are a couple of fine games already out there that make us think that Battlefield mobile would have a chance of working in some form.

One of those games is Blitz Brigade from Gameloft. Released way back in 2013, this team-based shooter features large(ish) open levels, capture-the-point objectives, and the ability to climb into vehicles to augment your attacks. Sound familiar?

It's far from the sheer scale and grandeur of DICE's series, of course, but we'd argue this ageing game proves that the basic Battlefield approach can be made to work well on mobile.

Another fine example of core Battlefield elements already working on mobile is World of Tanks Blitz. This is a brilliant mobile conversion of a smash hit PC multiplayer shooter, which bodes extremely well in itself.

But it's the nature of the action that we're looking at here. World of Tanks essentially makes a full game out of those tense tank vs tank exchanges in Battlefield 4.

We're pretty convinced that Battlefield could make its way to mobile. We've set out the technical case, and pointed out some precedents for this kind of experience on mobile.

That's not to say that we think we should just get a straight up port of Battlefield 4 or Battlefield 1 (it sounds like crazy numbering, but the latter is the newer game). Some major adjustments would be advised.

Traditional BF games are designed to be played for hours on end in a comfy chair. On mobile, it should be possible to blast through a round in ten minutes or so. The whole scale of the game, then, should be reduced a fair bit. We're talking level size, player count, and round length.

If anything, the whole vehicle side of things should be emphasised on mobile. As World of Tanks and plenty of other games show, the more rigid, mechanical nature of vehicular controls suit touchscreen inputs more than FPS, so they should probably be featured more heavily.