Total kills recorded during the beta stand at 45.42 million, according to the Battlefield Blog. Other fun facts include 1.01 million marksman headshots, 380,000 houses destroyed, and more than 12,000 killed by defibrillator.

This isn't the work of 10 genocidal madmen killing 4.5 million each, of course. More than 300,000 are participating in the beta, which closes Dec. 21. Battlefield Bad Company 2 is due for a March 2010 release.

Here's the rest of the stats, according to Electronic Arts:

• 3.43M Vehicles Destroyed
• 1.01M Marksman Headshots
• Total number of points awarded: 10,100,094,360
• Total number of Revives: 2.52M
• Total Repair Tool kills: 15.58K
• Total Knife Kills: 1.69M
• Total C4 Kills: 730.81K

PS3 Beta Update! [Battlefield Blog]

[image via]

"We're still working through things like how to best deal with Mirror's Edge 2," he said during a Wednesday morning interview in New York. "There are some things we learned about that [first] game. It was, I think, a massively innovative product. To be honest with you, I think it's a game that deserves to come back."

Riccitiello spent much of his interview with Kotaku affirming that his stated commitments to game quality and innovation made in 2008 were not shaken by relatively light holiday sales of original EA games such as Dead Space and Mirror's Edge last year. He considers both games, particuarly Dead Space, having set good foundations.

He also pointed to the company's 13% rise in revenues this year and said that it was directly attributable to efforts regarding quality and innovation.

Riccitiello is a gaming executive who believes not just in sequels — he was already saying, on the eve of EA's newest game, The Saboteur, that he's "hopeful for a sequel" — but is equally vocal about innovation and how the two so often go together.

Everything from recently improved EA FIFA games to some loved blockbusters of old, such as Grand Theft Auto IV, prove that successful sequels can and should house innovation. But, Riccitiello said, sometimes the sales success for an innovative game doesn't occur until a sequel or two, more polished than the predecessors, is released.

"Innovation doesn't mean it all works the first time," he said. "If it did everyone would do it."

And that kind of talk brought him back to Mirror's Edge and its future. He got specific about design decisions relevant to the original team at Mirror's Edge DICE and whoever is on the case — he didn't specify DICE or otherwise — who are pondering a sequel:

"I think Mirror's Edge was a fascinatingly original world.Fascinatingly original art direction. Music and sound design was great. I think the gameplay mechanic was a blast, but was intermittent and the levels didn't work. You found yourself scratching at walls at times, looking for what to do. Sometimes you had a roll going, downhill, slide, jump, slide, jump and then you just got stopped. It sort of got in the way of the fun.

"It was like we couldn't quite decide if we were building Portal or a runner. And I don't think the consumer was ready to switch it up quite that way. You could say it was a sharp and great innovation. I believe that it was. You have to figure out what to do from here if you want it to be a five million seller vs. a one-million unit seller.

"I've had several very lively debates with the dev team. And they are working on it. But there's a couple of different directions you could go.

"You could say: This thing needs to be more traditional. It's first-person game. There's a lot of successful FPS products out there that do really well. We could move in that direction.

"Or [you could say]: This was never about guns. It was about its stark originality. Maybe we can back away from some of those [older] things… and emphasize the smooth play and puzzles and move it toward, if you will, a Portal.

"And they're both valid. Innovation is a lot of times about getting so far, stepping back, assessing and then moving forward. And that's what I'm proud is happening at EA every day."

Potential fans of Mirror's Edge 2, you see the parameters of the design debate. Surely, you have some thoughts.

The game's economy, which had always walked the tight-rope between allowing people to play for free/very little and encouraging people to spend money, has this week been turned on its head. And the game's rather sizeable player base is upset.

See, many items in the game used to be available in one of two ways: valor points (VP), which you earned in combat and through playtime, and BattleFunds (BF), which were earned by spending real cash. Sure, some superficial things like outfits were BattleFunds-only, but all the important stuff - like better weapons - could be earned solely through consistent play.

Not anymore. EA have made sweeping changes to the game's online store, drastically raising the cost of almost everything bought via VP and lowering the price of almost everything bought via BF. "Rentals" have also been altered, so that important items can only be leased for 1-3 days, not for entire months as was previously possible.

This means that, according to some user calculations posted over on Ars Technica, "the amount of rounds you need to play each day to keep ONE weapon [is] about 60, which is about 5 hours playtime, every day". Obviously, that's not going to happen.

Which means the game, which by all accounts had been doing just fine allowing people to play for free then charging for the odd outfit or upgrade (example: I'd spent around $20 on it so far), is now for all intents and purposes subscriber-based, with those electing to play the game for free - which was one of the main "selling" points of Heroes in the first place - locked on the outer and stuck with the game's crummy standard weapons.

Makes you wonder, if EA felt the need to start squeezing players for microtransactions so drastically and so suddenly, whether the game was actually doing as great as we'd been led to believe...

"With the huge success of the PS3 Beta we decided to drastically increase the PC Beta's capacity to insure as many people as possible could participate" writes DICE's Gordon Van Dyke. "Unfortunately this meant we had to delay the Beta to very early next year giving us more planning time to make it happen and implement more optimizations."

So if you were one of those PC owners in a panic over rumours the beta had been cancelled...relax, will you?

The PC Beta Sky is Falling.... Not! [EA]

You can almost hear the two players hiding behind the opposite building snickering as they watch the enemy team flood the building they'd just filled with explodey goodness. I can certainly relate, although unfortunately I relate to the unfortunate people on the other team.

But at least one other military video game has their sights set on the popular first-person shooter, getting a bit of added traction thanks to some controversial design decisions made in the Activision blockbuster.

For the uninitiated, Electronic Arts' upcoming first-person shooter Battlefield: Bad Company 2 may sound an awful lot like Modern Warfare 2.

Both military games are set in modern times and pride themselves on realistic settings, weapons and combat. But where Modern Warfare 2's single player story is a narrative that leads players through the action along a scripted plot, Bad Company 2's developers say their game is a more open-ended experience.

"Battlefield: Bad Company 2 delivers an all-out war experience unlike any other FPS with its wide, open sand box environments, tactical destruction and of course the full range of player controlled vehicles," said Karl Magnus Troedsson, the executive producer of the Battlefield Franchise at Digital Illusions CE. "The game stands on more legs than this but these are the key areas which elevate Battlefield: Bad Company 2 above the rest of the pack."

While Troedsson calls Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2 direct competitors, he knew better than to launch EA's up-and-coming shooter at the same time as titan Modern Warfare 2. Instead, Bad Company 2 will be hitting the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 about four months later, in early March.

"These games are direct competitors while still being different games with different experiences," Troedsson said. "The gamers who like one will probably like the other, at least if they could get into the groove of the different second-to-second experiences.

"Obviously I wouldn't want to launch at the same time (as Modern Warfare 2). However, we've seen a huge uptake in interest for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 even during the height of their marketing campaign. And we're just getting started."

Much of that increased interest in Bad Company 2 has been driven by gamers unhappy with some of the decisions made in the development of Modern Warfare 2. Most contentious among gamers was developer Infinity Ward's decision to limit the control PC gamers have over how they play Modern Warfare 2 online.

Shortly after news broke that Modern Warfare 2 wouldn't support the ability for gamers to run their own online games on dedicated servers, Digital Illusions CE announced that Bad Company 2 would have dedicated servers.

It may sound like a small issue, but the Infinity Ward's decision spurred an online petition that currently has more than 210,000 signatures. It also created a movement among some gamers to shift their game purchase from Modern Warfare 2 to Bad Company 2.

One gamer mailed a check to Digital Illusions CE, telling them to use the money he had earmarked for Modern Warfare 2 to improve Bad Company 2.

Troedsson wouldn't say how big a factor dedicated servers will be for gamers come March.

"I can't answer since it's up to the audience," he said. "What I can say is that we've always considered this a key factor to deliver the best online experience available and anyone caring equally much about this will probably get more out of the multiplayer experience in Battlefield: Bad Company 2."

And he notes that while there are plenty of vocal gamers currently pledging support for Bad Company 2 at the cost of Modern Warfare 2, it's still a small percentage of the entire audience.

"So far we've gotten a lot of positive feedback based upon what we've announced regarding Battlefield: Bad Company 2," he said. "Some of it has come in the form of proper fan dedication from new as well as old diehard fans. We greatly appreciate this. These are the people that are at the core of our audience, the players we often listen to and who can help shape our games into something even better.

"However, comparing to the vast number of people that will buy the game it's still a small percentage of people that actually get in direct contact with us. As for the fan mail, what we've gotten recently I can only hope is a sign that we're doing something right."

And there's always a chance that a fan base so fickle, so easily swayed by design decisions, could decide that something about Bad Company 2 isn't a good fit either.

Troedsson realizes the risk of winning over such die hard fans, gamers who could be intolerant of change.

"We can't fulfill everyone's wishes but we always build games that we truly believe our players will love to play," he said.

With Bad Company 2 that means new game modes, new weapons and a much higher level of polish. Improvements that Troedsson believes makes Bad Company 2 the better of the two games.

"Well, obviously I believe Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is better, especially looking at how our game incorporates an all-out war experience with vehicles, destruction, etc," he said. "But not without a large amount of respect for our competitor, they have a great product with a huge fan base. Don't expect us to be intimidated by sheer volume of sales though."

In the first 24 hours alone, Modern Warfare 2 pulled in an estimated $310 million in North America and the United Kingdom alone, selling 4.7 million copies.

"No matter what market or what products I'm a strong believer that there's always space for competition," Troedsson said. "It helps keep people on their toes and it helps drive development."

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Unless of course you are a game journalist like our own Stephen Totilo, who discussed his hands-on time with the game earlier today. Judging by this footage, I find myself a little envious. It looks endlessly entertaining.

The PS3 multiplayer beta kicks off on the 19th. After that, PC players get an open beta in December, and a full multiplayer demo drops everywhere next year. If this is your only taste, savor it!

Earlier this week EA DICE shot down rumors of a November 19th launch date for the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 multiplayer beta for PS3 owners, but now it looks like they just wanted to announce it themselves instead of having GameStop doing it. To participate in the North American multiplayer beta test, PS3 owners need only reserve a copy of the game at the GameStop website or retail locations, at which point they will receive a key allowing them to join in the fun on the 19th.

The multiplayer beta takes place on the Arica Harbour map, pitting Americans against Russians in ground and vehicular combat for up to 24 players. You can check out the official beta announcement trailer below.

"With Battlefield: Bad Company 2 we're looking to raise the bar across all aspects of our multiplayer experience, setting a new standard for online play," says Patrick Bach, Senior Producer on Battlefield: Bad Company 2. "From the graphics to the vehicles, weapons and destruction, we are delivering the best online multiplayer game next year, and we want gamers to experience it themselves by playing the beta and demo."

What about the Xbox 360 and PC gamers out there? Don't fret too much. The PC open beta for the game kicks off next month, followed by a multiplayer demo for the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 early next year.

Image courtesy of the PlayStation Blog.

The scramble started when GameStop published a 24-hour promising deal promising access to the PS3 beta beginning Nov. 19. EA DICE's Twitter shot down the story and the deal was later unpublished.

Then, to Blend Games, EA said: "As for the beta, we'll have more details later this week." So, there you go. While those beta invite emails were bogus, it looks like the beta isn't, and might be coming sooner than we thought.

EA Confirms Bad Company 2 Beta, Details Coming This Week [Blend Games via Blue's News]

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]

The Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition isn't a collector's edition, weighed down with useless trinkets for an inflated price, but rather a limited version of the regular game packaged with some extras to make getting the game on day one a little more worthwhile. The six special customizations included in the LE are available to all players once they unlock them, but LE buyers will get them on day one, giving them a brief advantage in multiplayer. Think of it as a head start.

The four vehicle unlocks include improved armor, additional weapon mounts, a motion sensor that detects nearby enemies, and a tracer dart pistol that marks enemy vehicles to be tracked by rockets, even when outside of your line of sight.

Fans of Battlefield 1943 will feel right-at-home with the M1A1 submachine gun and the M1911 pistol, powerful weapons from more than 66 years in the past.

The Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition will be available on March 2nd in North America, sold at participating retailers while supplies last.

"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]

I'm sure there are clans and such that play with the level of communication displayed in this trailer for Battlefield Bad Company 2, due out early next year for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but I've never had the time nor the patience to play with a group long enough to achieve it. If that were me playing, I would have been off in a completely different direction, humming the Mission Impossible theme song until an enemy I never actually saw shot me in the head. Perhaps if they shot me in the head just so, I would develop mental powers, enabling me to play with the big kids.

Appears to be an infantry map, and a tight, close-range one at that, so gunners should be thrilled. Those (like me) hoping for another expansive level ala Seaside Skirmish, well, you keep on hoping.

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 download only game, developed by DICE, launched on July 8 for $15 and included a map and mode that had to be unlocked through the communal effort of everyone playing the game.

"We are honoured by the reception that the game has received so far," says Gordon Van Dyke, producer on Battlefield 1943. "Watching and participating in this non-stop multiplayer action has been a real treat for us and we can't believe how fast our fans reached 43 million kills. We can now truly say that we have set a new standard for what can be done in the downloadable games category and gamers recognize the endless value that Battlefield 1943 provides for just $15."

The worldwide community challenge to unlock the Coral Sea map began on Friday, July 10 at 19:43 CET. The Xbox LIVE community reached the goal of 43 million kills in just 5 days, with the PlayStation community hitting the mark in 8 days.

Van Dyke told Kotaku that the popularity of the community unlock has him pondering including something similar in Bad Company 2.

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]

This is the UK launch trailer for DICE's big thing in a small package Battlefield release, but luckily for those of us in the U.S. they included a quote that lists the game at $15, so we don't get confused by the pound price tag at the end of the video.

As for the game itself, I've yet to try it out, but DICE has done good by me so far, with a few notable exceptions, so I am willing to give the old killing my teammates while trying to figure out airplane controls a go again. And don't worry PlayStation 3 owners! You'll get your chance tomorrow. Sony just really likes Thursdays.

The premise is simple: take Battlefield, then make it absolutely free to play, by stripping some elements out and reserving them for paying customers, while supporting the whole thing via front-end advertising.

Such a move is like walking a knife's edge. Make too much free and there's no point running it as a product. Make too much paid content and you'll piss people off who want to play for free.

Question is, then, can Battlefield Heroes manage to walk that line?

LOVED
War Is Not Hell, It Is Gorgeous: Battlefield Heroes' design initially drew "TF2 clone" accusations, but those are unfounded. This game has a look all of its own, part Max Headroom, part, well, Wind Waker. It's charming, it's attractive. Even the theme song is catchy, and we haven't stopped whistling it all week long.

Learner's Permit: Being a Battlefield title, vehicular control is a big part of whether the game succeeds or fails, and Battlefield Heroes manages just fine. Land vehicles are quick and responsive (the tank's power has been reduced in exchange for added speed), while planes can even be controlled semi-successfully with a mouse.

Money Can't Buy You…Poisoned Knives: Had EA restricted certain special powers and weapons to paying customers, this game would be an instant failure. Thankfully, that's not the case. Money can only buy you a few things; mostly avatar clothing, along with a few upgrades that do things like level you up faster. Everything else is paid for via XP, gained only through playtime and accomplishing missions, and while paying customers can get access to higher level weapons faster, they're not locked out for those playing for free. If you think that's slightly unfair, remember, you're playing for free.

Walk Right In, Sit Right Down: Battlefield Heroes is all about jumping right into the action, and once in, staying there. To play, you just visit the site, login, then hit a giant yellow button that says "PLAY NOW". You'll be automatically whisked away to a server. Then, while in the game, respawn times are kept to an absolute minimum, at most 6-8 seconds, but sometimes only 3-4.

Smooth As Ice: We played Battlefield Heroes for a week, and in that whole time, only once encountered connection or server issues. Considering the game is still technically in beta, that's not too shabby.

Spongeheads: There's only a single one-shot kill in this game, and that's if you're run over by a land vehicle. Everything else, from sniper headshots to grenades to dynamite, only takes off part of a player's health. It means that you're never blindsided, and never killed off instantly because of something you never saw coming.

HATED
Spongeheads: Yet this is a double-edged sword. It's great that you can't instantly be killed by a camping sniper from across the map. But if you're the camping sniper – or anyone else tricky enough to lay something like an ambush – it's frustrating as hell. Vehicle damage could also do with a tune-up, as it shouldn't take 3-4 shots from a tank to kill infantry. 2-3 would do just fine.

Matchmaker: Like we said, Battlefield Heroes is all about jumping into the action. Which in some ways is great, but in others, quite frustrating. We only want to play vehicle maps, for example. Just vehicle maps. But there's no way of selecting this. You can prefer to play vehicle maps, but when you hit PLAY NOW, you're automatically taken to a server, and half the time, it's for an infantry map. Nothankyou. Favourite servers can be bookmarked, but we'd love a server list option where we can filter for specific maps, or map types.

Class Warfare: Maybe we've played too much Team Fortress 2 of late, but if a map is stacked with heavies, and we join as a heavy, we'd love to be able to respawn as a commando. Mix things up. But you can't. Because when you create a character, you're bound to that character, as is all the XP you accrue while playing as it. You can create additional characters, sure, but you can only play as one at a time.

There's just something about the mix of clean, cartoon visuals and refined multiplayer mechanics that make Battlefield Heroes an absolute blast. The fact you can play it effectively without paying a cent probably helps. Series purists may turn their noses up at the new visual style and slightly more "arcade" feel of the game, but that's fine. For those people, there's alway other Battlefield games. That they have to pay for.

For everyone else, though, Battlefield Heroes is a fun, accessible shooter that retains the best strategic elements of the series while making the game appealing to a broader range of people. If EA can add a few more matchmaking/server options to the game, Battlefield Heroes could be one of the sleeper hits of the year on PC.

Battlefield Heroes was developed by DICE, and published by EA for the PC. Launched on June 25, and is free to play, worldwide. Created two characters, a level 7 Gunner and a level 10 Commando, in the Royal Army.

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