Edited by [P.T]

Written By Tor Thorsen, GameSpot Posted Jun 11, 2009 2:29 am GMT

During financial presentation, EA COO John Pleasants reveals DICE is already hard at work on a new installment in the shooter franchise, due sometime during publisher's next fiscal year.

Though it helped put military multiplayer first-person shooters on the map, Electronic Arts' Battlefield franchise has seen itself outsold by the Call of Duty series in recent years. Granted, 2005's Battlefield 2 was a hit--selling more than 1 million units in the US, according to the NPD Group--as was its console spin-off, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, which sold 1.2 million units domestically on the Xbox 360, Xbox, and PlayStation 2. However, 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the overall best-selling game of 2007 and has sold more than 8 million units domestically (according to NPD) and more than 15 million units worldwide (according to Activision).


Battlefield 2 was a hit--will Battlefield 3 also find glory and become the next iOGC battle ground?

Now, with the release of archrival Activision's Modern Warfare 2--developed by former EA employees at Infinity Ward--looming, EA is planning a comeback in the military shooter sector. Speaking at the William Blair & Company investor conference this week, EA COO John Pleasants revealed that, in addition to this year's sequel to the critically lauded, multiplatinum Battlefield: Bad Company, EA is planning a new installment in its core Battlefield franchise.

"We have a lot of IP in that [shooter] area, and we have not not noticed that Call of Duty has a significant share of that business,"

Pleasants told analysts during a question-and-answer session. "

We are putting a real concentrated effort behind those titles. Battlefield happens to be one of them. ... I've had the luxury of looking at Battlefield 3 over at DICE over in Sweden. I was highly impressed by the way the people were working on that product. That's not for this fiscal year [ending March 31, 2010], but that is a product that is looking very good."

After saying that work on the download-only Battlefield 1943 (due in September) has been "going well," he said the Battlefield franchise is "strengthening and moving to a service model, and it has multiple titles within it which we can lever off of, so I am bullish on the Battlefield franchise, but it's not our only title which we are hoping to gain share with in the shooter category." He offered the forthcoming third-person shooter Army of Two: The 40th Day as another title that would court shooter fans.

All i know is that this is going to blow everythink else to hell!!

Did i also mention that it will be using the newly developed Frostbite 2 game engine

Well lets hope its got Dedi servers. Be carefull about the "Blow everything out the water" bit though, we said that about Bad Company 2 and they let us all down pretty badly on that one.

If they plan on using the Frostbite engine (hopefully a re-work) then the servers will be the same size as Bad Company 2. Not like battefield 2 that had 32 a side servers, frostbite just cant handle more than 16 a side (32 player max games) it puts a huge load on both the server side and client sid computations.

Anyway it's something to look forward to and if pricing is in the same region of BFBC2 then I see no reason why we wont be getting a server of our own.

Nice report there PT.

I won't hold my breath......

na dont think they will add a pay as u play thing to it... would be the dumbest idea they would of ever had...

I know 1 thing, if they did make u pay to play i would not be buying it

Some good news: http://www.ea.com/1/beta

and some bad news: http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/110/1109659p1.html

Already know it's going to be a sh*tty port. I wish it was a PC to console port rather than a Console to PC port.

Guys,

The official beta of Battlefield 3 will come after 12 months after the release of Medal of Honor.
But first you have to pre-reserve the medal of honor limited edition, and then u can registrate for BF3


Gargl 

http://www.ea.com/uk/