Battlefield 3 marches on 8 million sales

Eight million virtual soldiers have now deployed their money to the hands of merchants to buy Battlefield 3 and enlist in the virtual war, publisher Electronic Arts has revealed. If that figure were in elephants, it'd be eight million elephants.

39

Eight million virtual soldiers have now deployed their money to the hands of merchants to buy Battlefield 3 and enlist in the virtual war, publisher Electronic Arts has revealed. To put that figure into perspective, if it were in elephants, it'd be eight million elephants.

The revelation came from EA CFO Eric Brown during the Baird Technology Conference yesterday, Game Informer reports. Brown also noted that twelve million units have shipped in total; ten million of those had been shipped after the first week on sale.

After all the public bickering and squabbling between publishers, EA didn't come close to matching Activision's remarkable performance with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3--though this was undoubtedly expected. MW3 sold a whopping estimated 6.5 million units within the first 24 hours in the US and UK alone, and made $775 million within five days.

Developer DICE is continuing to work on fixing Battlefield 3 up. A hefty patch hit PlayStation 3 today and is due in Xbox 360 "soon." Beyond that, you may be surprised, shocked and astonished to hear that EA wants to make more Battlefield.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    November 30, 2011 9:00 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Battlefield 3 marches on 8 million sales.

    Eight million virtual soldiers have now deployed their money to the hands of merchants to buy Battlefield 3 and enlist in the virtual war, publisher Electronic Arts has revealed. If that figure were in elephants, it'd be eight million elephants.

    • reply
      November 30, 2011 9:08 AM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      November 30, 2011 9:12 AM

      That's pretty great. Anyone know what the PC cut of that is? 1 million?

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 9:20 AM

        http://bf3stats.com/api

        Sure it's not the complete picture, but given that PC players can only have a single soldier nowadays, it's probably a good picture of the puzzle.

        I know that the third party stat guys used to have a running tally of total players for BFBC2 broken down by platform, but I'm not seeing that on the bf3stats site yet.

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 11:20 AM

          Ahh, didn't see that they added leaderboards.

          Looks like only 250k PC players have visited the site compared to 50K 360 players and 85k PS3 players.

          So it's definitely a small portion of the playing public.

          Though I suppose if everyone registered with the site we'd have the best idea of wtf is going on in sell-through.

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 9:50 AM

        850k boxed retail, not counting digital sales. The DD figure has to be huge

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 11:58 AM

        They need to tell us PC sales INCLUDING the digital ones. Surely this sold extremely well on PC?

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 4:03 PM

          It sold close to a million in a month, i'd say it was hugely successful on the PC. Obviously consoles sold more.

          This goes to show that developers showing PC users respect pays off. Shitty console ports need not apply :)

    • reply
      November 30, 2011 9:16 AM

      Lets go stat whores, show off your shittiness!

      http://bf3stats.com/stats_pc/dedgecko/history#spm,kdr,wlr

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 9:26 AM

        http://bf3stats.com/stats_pc/Dudeman-Actual

        How do I get a fancy graph? I get "No history data available" :(

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 9:52 AM

          You've got to check your stats regularly, else it doesn't have a history to build against.

          It's just comparing you against yourself and others when you visit their site.

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 10:17 AM

        yours are way better than mine, my KD is shit. i kinda suck at the game TBH, but I FUCKING LOVE IT. I play recon mostly, or drive shit and blow up cars so i tell myself the quality of my kills makes up for the quantity. that gets me through the day, and lets me sleep most nights. most, but not all......

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 10:18 AM

          http://bf3stats.com/stats_pc/vitek%20r

          ive only ever checked this twice so i guess its accurate to when i played this morning

          • reply
            November 30, 2011 10:19 AM

            ok its not right, i dont have the f2000 or G36 or M40 unlocked, but whatever, the major shit on there looks accurate.

            • reply
              November 30, 2011 10:22 AM

              did you tell it to update?

              • reply
                November 30, 2011 10:26 AM

                yup, it did it automatically when i went there after seeing your post. some of the stats are wrong, but the primary stuff seems right. it may have to do with the fact ive only visited the site twice since release.

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 10:25 AM

        http://bf3stats.com/stats_pc/medster/

        24 MVPs in 200 games

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 10:25 AM

        'sup

        http://bf3stats.com/stats_pc/deject

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 10:28 AM

        Yes, show us your level 33 guy which you spent 2 entire real world days in game with :p
        Not shitty at all dude :)

        Shitty is a guy with a family and a job, struggling along at level 11 (me)
        http://bf3stats.com/stats_pc/rheaume_72

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 10:31 AM

          Although I am in the top 1% Vehicle destroyed / kills percentage in the world(pc) so that's comforting :)

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 11:12 AM

          Trolling?

          Mid 30's is pretty much average for those of us that only get to game an hour or two here and there through the week since release. Those that don't have families / jobs (in school or whatever), are likely 50+

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 12:23 PM

          Family + Job + 3-4 hours a night and a long weekend before Thanksgiving with the house to myself = http://bf3stats.com/stats_pc/Zakko42

          I'm watching no television, I'm playing no other games, I'm addicted to this game bad...

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 3:56 PM

          Family + job + playing a couple hours at night after the wife and kids are asleep.

          http://bf3stats.com/stats_pc/zohar79

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 4:00 PM

          [deleted]

          • reply
            November 30, 2011 4:03 PM

            His SPM is around 300, but it's climbing. Mine has gotten higher since I branched out beyond the support kit.

          • reply
            November 30, 2011 4:58 PM

            Try 67 hours and only 32 :/

            • reply
              November 30, 2011 9:44 PM

              Wow you guys are making me feel even worse lol, my wife would kill me if I was putting that many hours in... But yeah, 67 hours, thats roughly 12% of your waking life over the last month in game, which I used to pull off but i just... cant anymore.

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 10:50 PM

          40 hours and 39 :/

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 10:43 AM

        http://bf3stats.com/stats_pc/Supalink/history#spm,kdr,wlr I like to knife.

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 4:06 PM

          lol top 85% in rounds played, top 3% in KDR and Win/Loss :D

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 4:14 PM

        http://bf3stats.com/stats_pc/comiekazie#spm,kdr,wlr

        I prefer BF3S.com though, because the former won't filter my stats correctly. The PKP is always stuck mid stack when you filter for kills, I have ~1500 versus ~300 for my next best.

        http://bf3s.com/player/319096012

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 4:25 PM

          What loadout are you using for the a-91?

          • reply
            November 30, 2011 5:11 PM

            PK-A, Foregrip, Heavy Barrel. For close to mid range I aim at the collar bone and shoot quick bursts letting the natural rise of the weapon to work its way up and score a HS. Single shot for long range, which the A-91 is fully capable of, letting the sights settle before shooting again.

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 4:17 PM

        mine are actual shit. I admit to using the grinder. (metro, conquest, 64 player) :(

        for some really stupid reason I wanted the PDW medal. now I am trying to rebound and actually play. :(

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 4:58 PM

          If you're grinding metro conquest your SPM ought to be pretty high.

          • reply
            November 30, 2011 5:11 PM

            it was for a while. then I combined engineer with PDW's. that did not go well.

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 5:03 PM

          Just get somone to smoke the stairs on Metro/conquest and walk up sighted in, mass kills. Do the same for Utility hall if you manage to cap B. If you're Russian you can do the reverse somewhat less effectively. Alternatively you can make a hard push on the central escalator (the one furthest in near the ticket booth) with smoke and push a squad to either flank through the defenders on B or, if you're lucky, sneak up to A.

    • reply
      November 30, 2011 9:42 AM

      How the hell do I make my Amazon download of BF3 get into Origin properly? I can't seem to find a way to get Origin to see that all the files are already downloaded.

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 9:51 AM

        [deleted]

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 9:52 AM

          agreed :)

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 10:19 AM

          I download at 100kb/s and already took like 3 days of using my full internet connection speed to download the game. I finally got Origin to recognize the files but now when I open Battlelog it tells me there is a Game Update available so i click download update. All it does is open Origin again and nothing happens. I even did a Repair Install in Origin and getting the same result. ˃:(

          • reply
            November 30, 2011 10:35 AM

            I got it from amazon as well. After doing the full download from the amazon downloader, it basically just reinstalled Origin (had it from the beta already, it reinstalled it) and then Origin asked me for the key, and downloaded the entire game again inside Origin, with no acknowledgement of the Amazon download. It was kind of stupid and annoying, but my connection is very fast and it went pretty quick.

            I dont know what to tell you other than its probably just the way Origin is made because it did it to me as well, but that sucks if you are metered or have a slower download speed.

            • reply
              November 30, 2011 10:59 AM

              All the files were contained in the "Data.zip" file so I just extracted them and Origin sees the game now. And you'd think the repair install feature would clear up any issues there might be.

              • reply
                November 30, 2011 12:00 PM

                Sigh... well EA's support agents were useless so I guess I'll be re-downloading the game this week.

    • reply
      November 30, 2011 10:06 AM

      Best Battlefield ever. It's just such a fantastic game and I have a ton of fun playing.

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 8:08 PM

        so fucking true

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 8:12 PM

        I could do without the IRNV, it could be completely removed from the game and I would not weep.

        • reply
          December 1, 2011 4:50 AM

          I honestly think I do as good or better with holographic sights than with the IRNV scopes.

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 8:21 PM

        It is awesome. So much fun. The more I played it the more it started to remind me of the epic-ness that was BF2!

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 8:37 PM

        It's good but the maps are the worst of the series.

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 8:47 PM

          I agree with this. The really big conquest maps are fine with 64 players, but the rest are better with 32. I also miss the variety in BC2. There are no snow, jungle, or desert maps in BF3. Everything is in a city or industrial yard, and every building is a concrete box. BC2 had huts, and houses, and barns. It was more natural and immersive.

        • reply
          November 30, 2011 9:11 PM

          [deleted]

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 8:44 PM

        [deleted]

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 8:50 PM

        [deleted]

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 11:20 PM

        [deleted]

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 11:31 PM

        I really only have fun in a squad that is working well together with VoIP

    • reply
      November 30, 2011 11:08 AM

      Still $29 at Fry's. Sale ends tomorrow. :[

    • reply
      November 30, 2011 5:50 PM

      Good. DICE deserves it. If they are at 8 now then they will surely break 10 over the next six months, probably much sooner. Modern Warfare 3 may move 20 mil units but 10+ is still phenomenal. Battlefield now has a seat at the main table. Moreover, BF is the healthier franchise over the long term. It's is more adaptable to change. It can flex and grow. CoD is firmly wedded to CoD4's gameplay. Activision won't touch it and will continue to ride it just like they did with their music/rhythm games.

      • reply
        November 30, 2011 5:51 PM

        strike at karkand and the other maps will whip up a frenzy. it will be glorious.

    • reply
      November 30, 2011 5:55 PM

      I wonder how many of those can only play for 10 minutes at a time before freeze/crash to desktop.

      at least one :(

    • reply
      December 1, 2011 4:09 AM

      If you're playing MW3 instead of BF3, to quote the illustrious Reggie Fils-Aime: "whats wrong with you?"

    • reply
      December 1, 2011 8:25 AM

      so it made close to $500 million dollars, crazy

      • reply
        December 1, 2011 11:07 AM

        That's sales, not profits, and keep in mind that the price point has varied wildly from $40 to $60 depending when and where you bought it (I presume the numbers are from before the Origin / Amazon sales of $30 this last week).

Hello, Meet Lola