Electronic Arts is happy, happy, happy these days, with developers embracing the use of the DICE-developed Frostbite 2 engine. The DICE-developed Frostbite engine is appearing in more and more EA titles, with the latest being Mass Effect that is confirmed to use it next.

EA could not be happier with the fact that its developers are using Frostbite because of one simple fact, which is that since EA owns the Frostbite engine, they don’t have to pay royalties or licensing for the use of another engine. Perhaps best of all, the Frostbite 2 engine has shown that it is up to the task and is a state of the art development engine that has been used in a number of different types of games. From first person shooters to racing titles, Frostbite has been able to deliver.

In the announcement that the next Mass Effect would use the Frostbite 2 engine, it was also announced that BioWare Montreal will be handling the development. The game will utilize much of the technology that the Dragon Age III team has already been building using Frostbite.

Sources have suggested to us that the announcement of the next Mass Effect using the Frostbite engine could also signal that the game is being targeted for the next generation consoles, as it would be difficult to transition to a new engine at this point in the series. It could also be that it will actually be the rumored Frostbite 3 engine that will be used to power the new Mass Effect.

Frostbite 3 is the rumored 3rd generation of the Frostbite engine that takes advantage of the next generation of consoles beyond the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 by being optimized for the new consoles, as well as adding new features into the engine to take advantage of the new features in the consoles. DICE has not confirmed this to actually be Frostbite 3, but we know that the engine was designed to be able to take advantage of the next generation of consoles.