http://www.chiphell.com/thread-587771-1-1.html

Translation from Chinese speaker on GAF

Lasgana: BF4
Lasgana: Coming October 23rd, 2013
Lasgana: development just started, expected to be done in 1 yr [Nirolak's Note: Since this is the one likely to elicit the most "this is fake" notes, I feel I should elaborate. Given some later points (like already have an internal demo), this seems to refer to EA's normal two year development cycle of a one year pre-production cycle with ~30-40 people and then ballooning up to 150-300 people to make the game after most things are prototyped and planned out. Visceral, BioWare, and a fair number of publishers outside EA also operate this way since it allows you to have multiple projects without cyclical layoffs due to scaling down in pre-production and scaling up in production. For example, during the downtime between Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3, DICE's spare staff worked on making Medal of Honor's multiplayer and helping to build Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit. As to what the bulk of DICE's staff worked on prior to this going into production, it's probably either a second project or, once again, other EA games.]
Lasgana: will be on pc, ps3, xbox360 and next gen consoles
Lasgana: will be one of the first games for next gen consoles
Lasgana: commander system comes back
Lasgana: profile can be linked with other devices like ipad
Lasgana: auto login, need internet all time, support cloud saves
Lasgana: easier to pickup the game, to take care of players from CoD
Lasgana: support body and voice control for this commander system
Lasgana: better battlelog integration and better stats reporting
Lasgana: supports video playback and sharing
Lasgana: have gem store for dlc and other stuff like that
Lasgana: 3 factions: russia, usa and china
Lasgana: can deploy female soliders
Lasgana: frostbite 2.0 engine
Lasgana: pc and next-gen consoles supports 64 player maps
Lasgana: 360 and ps3 will be less
Lasgana: pc, and next-gen consoles will provide 60 fps
Lasgana: already have a demo video internally within EA,
Lasgana: matching the quality of BF3 already
Lasgana: bf4 will use 80% of power of frostbite 2, whereas bf3 only 30-40%
Lasgana: modern background
Lasgana: i mean story background

NOTE: I edited where Lasgana only said PS4/neXtBox because other translations specifically only used "next gen consoles". Obviously the naming of specific consoles was Lasgana's own interpretation and not what was posted in Chinese. Especially considering DICE previously said Battlefield was coming to Wii U.

(someone translated with google translate) ----
- BF4 has a 1yr development cycle and has a tenative launch date of oct 23rd 2013
- it will be on the big 3 current gen systems as well as next gen platforms
- commander role in MP will return with new tools and abilities
- voice commands
- battlelog will be tied to the game
- game will support video recording with internal replay system this might be in box or via dlc.. thats unclear or if its universal paltform inclusion
- currently there are three factions: USA, Russia, and China!!
- female charcaters (NPC's) and the ability to play as them in MP
- next gen systems and pc will support 64-player MP however current gen console releases wont
- frostbite 2.0
- next gen console versions run @ approx 60fps, current gen @ 30fps, PC will ahve an FPS lock of 100fps
- exp system will be again present

Not too excited about this (even thought I'm a huge BF fan). In my heart I want to believe DICE won't let us down, but I feel like EA is pushing more and more for the casualization of Battlefield.

Non-related questions:

1) How will three factions fit into this? Some multiplayer stages will feature a specific nation vs nation, while other multiplayer maps will feature a different nation vs nation?

2) Commander system comes back? I wonder how this will work. If they're trying to make it simpler for COD fans, why reintroduce one of the more "hardcore" features?

Female soldiers. Cool, I guess. It feels a tad weird to imagine it right now, but I'll have no worries with this I'm sure.

1) yes, they did that with all other (pre-BF3) games.

2) I suspect it will be closer to what we had with BF2/2142 with some simplicity due to consoles not having a keyboard. I personally think WiiU's gamepad will make this a no-brainer choice.

How do you know what an optimized console game can do on a unreleased console/game?

Have to remember DICE has had their engine for quite a bit longer now and all of this is simply target performances. The game isn't fully running on any hardware yet. Point should be that it will be bigger/better on next gen hardware vs current gen hardware.

WiiU is more powerful with a lot more memory and newer technologies than PS360. While it may not be identical to other next-gen, there is no reason to automatically think it will be a gen apart. Frankly, I think its rather ignorant to assume so. Just read the comparison thread so far. Clearly not leagues difference there so far.

I also am not liking the last line as the two IPs should be different.

1) I don't remember there being any other factions than USA and Russia in the Bad Company series. I also don't remember multiple factions in the previous titles, although I'll admit I didn't really pay much attention back then.

There have been US, EU, China, Middle East Unions, Russia, etc. BF2 shipped with 3 factions and added two more later on through expansions. Actually, now that I think of it, BF2 might be the only one that did that. 2142 I believe only had two, as did 1942. BC series only had two as well I think, so yeah, I'm just thinking of BF2. But yeah,you had a map that focused on two of the eventually five separate factions.

Oath, that quote is not inspiring, and I really want BF4 to be super-duper awesome.

Still playing on a PC game that is unoptimized on an upoptimized new engine at the time. PCs require far greater specs than consoles. They are not very good comparisons when looking at differences in raw power and end result. WiiU may likely be less powerful than your PC, but that has no bearing on the final output of a game that has been optimized to run on its hardware.

it should have been clear that this will be for next gen as well. the question is, how long after the current gen release^^

Considering WiiU is already out and the others will be out that holiday, not much.