Says the Battlefield producer Gordon Van Dyke on the Battlefield Blog:

As of today there is no official Battlefield Bad Company 2 Beta and I wanted to warn people out there of fake/hoax sites perpetrating to have a sign-up for one. We do not have any form of beta sign-ups, nor would we ever endorse such a practice or shady url to do so. Please do not let these e-tards take advantage of your enthusiasm for BFBC2 in their scam and only give them the middle-finger if anything. So, unless you read it here or from our official Twitter page it isn't real.

Pretty sure EA's seen copies and sent them to their corporate security team, but If anyone's gotten one of these bogus sign-up come-ons, let me know. I'm curious what information it wanted, whether it was Steam ID and password or what.

Fake BFBC2 Beta Signup Sites! [Battlefield Blog via Blue's News]

"Dedicated servers FTW. What ever secures a better online experience is a given for us," Tweeted DICE's K.M. Troedsson.

KM Troedsson (L_Twin) on Twitter [thanks Cirap]

Instead, the game has been delayed into 2010, DICE's Gordon Van Dyke telling G4TV:

We haven't released a Frostbite [DICE's game engine] built game on PC, so going into this project we lacked a starting foundation we had on Console. There are also many different and unique only challenges to the PC that has lead to us pushing the release even further to Q1 CY 2010 [early next year]. This was a hard pill to swallow, but it was absolutely needed to ensure the features and functionality that PC Players have come to expect from Battlefield on PC are not missing. Things like support for DirectX 9 and 10, higher player count (up to 32-player matches), wide peripheral support i.e. Joysticks for flying, VoIP, and ranked server provider hosting. So it was and still is the absolutely right decision, for quality's sake, to not release until it is ready.

Sad reading that a Battlefield game of all games is having trouble being ported to the PC, but everything he says makes sense. Better to wait and have them do it right than have them do it...not right.

Battlefield 1943 [G4TV]

The word went out over Twitter on the official Battlefield 1943 feed yesterday

"Think you're a Bad Ass with BF1943 weapons? What if I said you'll be able to use your Semi-Auto Rifle, Sniper Rifle, or SMG in BFBC2!"

Battlefield 1943 And Bad Company 2: Connected Somehow? [PSX Extreme]

That's one of the fun facts Gordon Van Dyke of DICE dropped in a a forum post updating Battlefield's response to overwhelming first-day demand. They've added plenty of server capacity, he says, so the issues should be well behind the game. Another stat: The first day of playing on Xbox 360 saw more than 29 years of gameplay completed.

MTV Multiplayer calculates it'll take about two weeks to unlock that map on the 360, with the PS3 and PC following comparably. That is, if everyone continues to pitch in and does his or her part for victory.

Good News and Bad News!!!! [Electronic Arts UK Community via ThatVideoGameBlog

The game has already been played by over 80,000 people in a single day, and that's just going off the Xbox Live leaderboards. With the game now rolling out on PlayStation 3, and a PC version to come, this could (surprisingly) be one of the biggest online games of the year.

For reference, Bionic Commando Rearmed was hailed as a downloadable megahit after moving 100,000 in a week.

Battlefield 1943 - Over 80,000 Players Strong In Only One Day [Gamerbytes]

Speaking at the William Blair Growth Stock Conference, Pleasants said "I've had the luxury of looking at Battlefield 3 over at DICE in Sweden and was highly impressed by the way the team is working on that product. Of course, that's not [coming out] in the fiscal year, but that is a product that is looking very good".

With Bad Company 2, Battlefield 1943 and Battlefield Heroes coming out, could there be such a thing as too much Battlefield?

Electronic Arts Confirms Battlefield 3 In Development [G4]

Built on the Battlefield 2 engine, BFO will pit US forces against Russia in a Middle Eastern setting, with up to 64 players supported at any one time. And...that's about where the details end, because EA and local team Neowiz are playing stingy with the announcements, promising to drip-feed stuff like unit info over the next few months.

You can check out the teaser trailer and site below, but be warned, for some reason I could only get it running in Internet Explorer.

Battlefield Online [EA]

[thanks Kieran!]

Yup, a snow day! Which means the event was called off. That didn't stop word leaking out about which games were due to be revealed, though. According to a report on VG247, not only were the three new Need for Speed games due to make an appearance, but also some new stuff.

Like a brand new, unannounced game from DICE, which VG247 reckon is a new Battlefield title. Also meant to be shown was an Army of Two sequel.

EA, not wanting the surprise spoiled, refused to confirm any of this, of course. Meaning we'll have to wait until the snow dies down and the event's rescheduled to hear more.

Snow cancels new DICE console game showing in UK [VG247] [Image]

"My family, I think they approve because it stops me hanging around on street corners and getting into mischief, LOL," says Stanley Thompson, and yes, that LOL is all his, too. "When I tell people that I play FPS games online, they say, “what at your age?” So I tell them it keeps my mind sharp and gives me something to do other than watching TV all day."

Thompson, 70, is a member of the gaming clan *TBE* TheBritishEmpire.org (his nicknames are IraAten, IraAten*TBE* and Maybe70uk.) His preferred games are a who's who of the FPS genre — Joint Operations, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor. But he got his start as a serious gamer back in 2000 with Monster Truck Madness, and another racer. I'd love to see a 62-year-old guy racing monster trucks online. It's way more hilarious than getting your ass shot by someone old enough to have a living memory of World War II.

An Interview with a 70 Year Old FPS Gamer [Gamezine]

I'm not sure [about] wall-running, but certainly the others — certainly the sense of physicality in the world: the running, jumping, vaulting, [and] sliding...I think, yeah, we will definitely try to incorporate them into future Battlefield games.

Shame. No wall-running? Battlefield could really have done with a parkour class, would have blown the game wide open.

Making Mirror's Edge: Behind the Scenes at DICE [1UP]

In addition to that change, the official Bad Company site writes that further tweaks are coming, including technical performance fixes and the availability of bonus weapons, previously only available to those who had pre-ordered or opted in to the newsletter. Boosh! Wait... that's not right.

September 9th News Update [B Company News]

DICE confirms five Battlefield titles in development [GI.biz]

The seven titles we owe it to: Doom, Quake, Tribes, Battlezone, Unreal Tournament, Counterstrike and Battlefield.

If nothing else, at least the past two or three years of FPSes, multi- and single-player, have combined to give us standardized controls, which makes picking up a new title infinitely easier to play — especially when it comes to free looking. It's now pretty much left stick = movement, right stick = head, with no fruity switching of camera angles or other unnecessary twists. Also, Y or triangle is use, B or circle is jump, etc. If you think that's a minor gamer assist, ask yourself the last time you used two different copiers or fax machines with the same set of commands.

Ed also argues that single-player FPSes are constantly delivering great new titles, but multiplayers have been "the same old for quite a few years now." I just can't see it that way. Maybe structurally they are the same, but characters, missions, game story, that's what gets me into an FPS now. True, a new gameplay innovation that's widely adopted will beat the best written game for sales, but I ask you, what else could a multiplayer FPS be doing right now?

How 7 Games Created the Modern Team Multiplayer FPS

I suppose that makes sense. Still, we're not much for microtransactions and the ability to buy your way into experience with time-limited multipliers that cost real money. It just makes us want to wash the pain away.

EA Goes Free-To-Play: Battlefield Heroes' Producer Speaks [Gamasutra]