Battlefield Hardline Goes Gold

Battlefield Hardline, the upcoming cops-and-robbers first-person shooter from Visceral Games, has "gone gold," meaning the studio has completed initial development on the project. The game is now headed to factories for mass production, and to digital shelves.

The news comes from the official Battlefield Twitter account. A tweet was accompanied by the image at left, showing a man with a golden gun (unfortunately, not that golden gun).

Though Hardline is still weeks away from its official release date, more than 7 million people have already played the game through its recently concluded open beta.

Visceral learned a lot from the beta, and is implementing a series of changes as a result, including weapon tweaks and more.

"Going gold" is indeed an important milestone in the development of any game. But Hardline is an online-heavy game, and development on the title will remain ongoing long after its initial release. After all, DICE is continuing to support Battlefield 4, a game that originally launched in fall 2013.

The Hardline release date is March 17 in the US and March 20 in the UK on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PC. The game was originally scheduled to launch in October 2014, but publisher Electronic Arts later delayed the game so it could add "more innovation."