Both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are confirmed to have installation options for high-resolution textures.
October 7, 2011

An interesting nugget of news has come out of last night's Battlefield 3 preview event in San Francisco held by EA and DICE. While speaking with GamerZines, DICE's Patrick Liu revealed that the game would allow players to install content from one disc that would let the game stream higher resolution textures.

"There's a voluntary install on the 360," Liu said to GamerZines. "I think Rage did it as well, where you can install content to stream higher res textures. We're pushing that technology to the limit, and compared to our competitors, I would argue that we're the best looking game."

IGN reached out to EA for a statement or confirmation on this additional feature, and they responded:

"Battlefield 3 for Xbox 360 ships on two disks with endless hours of spectacular high-definition gameplay; disk one features the stunning multiplayer, co-op levels and HD installation content, and disk two features the superb single-player campaign."

Additionally, we asked EA whether or not the game would offer the same feature for PS3 owners, and fortunately this seems to be the case. "The PS3 version requires the same install but it's all on the one blu-ray disk," a spokesperson for the company confirmed.

So, it appears that the game will offer support for HD installations across both platforms, resulting in better looking graphics in exchange for some HDD real estate.