i'm actually surprised there's a BF3 at all to be honest. with a possible close release date to BC2 which apparently has a similar theme, its kind of peculiar.
I thought so at first too but....well, baseless speculation incoming.
1. EA has this huge infrastructure for supporting older BF games. It's got its own profit model, and by the numbers, still generating cash. Maybe not a lot, but I easily see 30 servers (with full ones hidden) whenever we play BF2.
2. EA hasn't kept apace of the recent developments in online systems. IWNet, Bnet 2.0, ect.... EA needs to make up some lost ground on that front.
3. 1 + 2 = The migration of their infrastructure to a new BF title, with a redesign of the whole system to be more like what other current gen FPS devs are offering.
4. MAG was a serious slap in the face to BF, from where I stand. It does what BF does now, only bigger, it took many of its elements like the commander and squads, and even the factions, and just did them all better. I think EA might have been thinking about totally re-branding BF in CoD's image.....but MAG showed them people do still want to play full on, large-scale tactical FPS...instead of just very pretty frag-fests.
All those things taken together make me think that someone at EA pushed hard for another shot at the classic BF series. CoD also set the standard that you can have the same FPS franchise done multiple ways and players will still recognize each game for what it is. (Halo is another example of this.)
It's going to have to stand out with at least one great new feature. If it really is just a better done BF2 it better have a huge player limit and even better graphics than BC2 to warrant a purchase from people who bought BC2.
40 player battles, is the current word. Smaller than BF2 by a long shot, but, with the increase in graphics (and the other refinements, terrain destruction ect...) you have to lose somewhere.
) you won't like the rest of the game either.
