Electronic Arts announces its decision to create a unified UI on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of Battlefield 1, Battlefield 4, and Battlefield Hardline.

In anticipation of Battlefield 1's release date this fall, video game publisher Electronic Arts has announced that it plans on creating a unified user interface for all the franchise's games on current generation consoles. The impetus behind the decision is to make it easier for fans of the titles to create parties of friends and move in between Battlefield 1, Battlefield 4, and Battlefield Hardline.

What this basically means is that players will be able generate squads from the UI before joining a match, which will then allow one to choose any Battlefield game that all of the players in the party own to jump into and swap between. Furthermore, Electronic Arts also says that the UI will offer up suggestions for maps and modes by way of a "recommendation engine" that might be of interest to fans of Battlefield 4, Hardline, or the upcoming shooter set during World War I.

According to Electronic Arts, the unified UI will initially apply only to Battlefield 4, but once Battlefield 1 drops on October 21, it will be updated to accommodate the new game. Hardline, however, will get support later on down the road, but the publisher hasn't offered specifics as to exactly when that will occur.

The news comes from DICE and Electronic Arts emails to players who are signed up for the Battlefield newsletter, and the companies assert that in order for the unified UI aspect to work properly, mandatory updates will be required. Once applied, the feature ought to benefit fans who own all of the titles digitally, as it will be much faster to switch in between the gameplay of modern automatic guns to Battlefield 1's stripped down weapons without having to swap out discs.

For those still trying to determine whether or not Battlefield 1 will be worth the price of admission on day one, fans shouldn't have to wait much longer, as DICE and Electronic Arts have promised that the game's open beta is fast on its way. As it happens, even though the developer and publisher haven't provided an exact date for the test's availability, thanks to the German to English translation abilities of a Twitch stream viewer, it has been speculated that the open beta might release after gamescom 2016.

Whatever the case may be for Battlefield 1's open beta, it's hard to imagine that fans of the shooter franchise would be opposed to the prospect of a unified UI for all of the series' games on current generation consoles. In fact, the idea has the potential to work well with other first-person shooters, as Activision could handily implement it once Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered comes out alongside Infinite Warfare in November.

Battlefield 1 is set to release on October 21, 2016 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Source: Reddit (via GamesRadar)