DICE has offered insight as to why Star Wars Battlefront isn’t available on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Speaking on Reddit, Matthew Everett, Star Wars Battlefront’s Community Manager, explained that the horsepower of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One was necessary to achieve the developer’s goals for the hotly anticipated science-fiction shooter.
“We could not achieve what we want to visually and with the gameplay functionality without the power of this generation’s consoles or a modern day PC," said Everett.
Star Wars Battlefront 3 was originally in development for Sony and Microsoft’s last-generation consoles, though the game was ultimately canceled. As such, the series skipped an entire generation of consoles.
Star Wars Battlefront on PS4 and Xbox One will be released in November 2015. Unlike previous iterations in the series, the game won’t feature any space battles. Publisher Electronic Arts expects Battlefront to ship 9-10 million copies worldwide by April 2016.