14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts, the publisher, and DICE, the long time developer, have not talked very much about their plans for Battlefield 3, the new installment in the long-running shooter franchise, but it seems that the PC legacy of the series will be played up in the upcoming product.
A Twitter message from David Goldfarb, who is the lead designer working on Battlefield 3, says that the upcoming game “will not be exclusive,” but he has added, “We are putting special effort into the pc version, even for us, it’s extraordinary.”
The focus on the PC means that Battlefield 3 will be using the newest technology available on the platform and that comes at the cost of support of older operating systems, like Windows XP, which is being dropped so that the new features introduced in Vista and in Windows 7 can shine.
The lack of details on Battlefield 3 will be rectified by DICE and Electronic Arts via a talk that will focus on the shooter and will take place at the Game Developers Conference during March.
Gamers who have picked up the first-person shooter Medal of Honor, for which DICE created the multiplayer component, for the PC, the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3, already have a key they can use to get into the beta stage for Battlefield 3.
John Riccitiello, who is the chief executive officer of Electronic Arts, has suggested that the beta stage could come in the second part of this year with the launch coming at some point during 2012.
Electronic Arts has been recently frustrated by the domination that rivals Activision are enjoying in the first person shooter area with their Call of Duty franchise and have signaled their intention of hitting back with releases like Medal of Honor, the new Battlefield and the project that is coming from former Infinity Ward staffers that have created Respawn Entertainment.