Battlefield 3 receives 1.25 million pre-orders and counting
It may be normal practice to see analyse a game’s sales figures after its release, but with all the hype surrounding the arrival of Electronic Arts’ return to the roots with one its most endearing first person shooter series, Battlefield
3, even the Pre-Order sales figures are under scrutiny. The game has seen an astounding 1.25-million pre-orders placed to date and the number could very well rise as we near the game’s release date.
Billed as the true successor to Battlefield 2, the latest game will drop the single player campaign which the two off-shoots, Battlefield: Bad Company and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 adopted, as the franchise tried to penetrate the console market.
However, after trying and testing the waters in the console market with the aforementioned titles, it became clear that the only reason people played Bad Company 1 and 2 was because of its solid, award winning multiplayer.
In fact, the move may well have paid off as Eric Brown, the Chief Financial Officer at Electronic Arts, revealed that Battlefield was doing much better on the pre-order count, than the previous Bad Company game.
According to the CFO, “To date we have about 1.25 million pre-orders on Battlefield 3, so it's still well ahead of its predecessor title, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, in regards to pre-orders in the same number of weeks till launch. So it's doing very well.”
Just to give everyone a rough estimate, and by rough we mean very rough, each copy of the game, on average, is priced at $60. So, according to our calculations, the total revenue earned, so far, would be around $75-million. Which, if one looks at it, is
a lot of money for a game that has not even been released yet.
However, seeing how the budget Electronic Arts’ allocated for marketing the game was a cool $50-million, it seems that the publisher were anticipating such results.
Commenting on the aforementioned advertising campaign, Brown said, “We have a pretty extensive campaign planned for Battlefield 3. We have the advantage of a two-and-a-half week early launch window versus our competitor (Activision's Call of Duty: Modern
Warfare 3), and we intend to use that.”
It seems that EA remain bullish and expect even more sales to follow over the coming months and with the holiday season just around the corner as well, coupled with the early release date for Battlefield 3, this Christmas may just be a very jolly one for
EA indeed. That is unless Activision ruin the party with a certain Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
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