Since its release last year, Battlefield 3 has been gaining quite a community of driven first-person shooting fans, thanks to its realistic shooting action and intense situations.  However, said community hasn’t been crazy about the fact that the game has only seen one true expansion so far, the Back To Karkand pack.  Well, Electronic Arts resolved this last night at an event here in San Francisco, announcing not one but three new expansion packs that will help bolster the first-person shooter’s longevity.

The good news keeps on coming for publisher ZeniMax Media. Worldwide revenues generated by The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim have placed it among the industry's most successful titles, and demand for the title shows no signs of slowing. Measured by revenue, Skyrim was the second best selling game of 2011, and 2012 sales remain strong, with continuing digital downloads and large shipments of units to retail. Within the first month following its release in November, Bethesda Softworks® reported it had shipped over 10 million units of Skyrim across all platforms, representing approximately $650 million in retail sales, and those results have since increased substantially.  

Electronic Arts’ $100 million marketing budget seems to be paying off. After Medal of Honor was obliterated by Call of Duty: Black Ops last Christmas, Battlefield 3 is on its way to selling the 10 million copies worldwide that EA shipped to retailers. Gamers who play the new DICE game like it. Battlefield 3 videos have been viewed more than 132 million times, Twitter followers near a quarter of a million, and the Battlefield 3 Facebook community is on the verge of cresting 3 million “likes”. And now the game is on sale with Black Friday deals across the country and Cyber Monday deals coming soon.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been going on for a bit about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, while occasionally taking jabs at Battlefield 3.  Yeah, EA’s press treatment hasn’t been the most favorable regarding this game (they basically denied some smaller outlets, even the ones they invited to events) while Activision has taken care of anyone and everyone with their product.  But when we get down to the good and gritty, the games should take primary focus.  So, with that, I took some devoted time to sit down with Battlefield 3 to see how it turned out.  And despite a few hiccups, it’s a mighty war machine.

Electronic Arts has sold through 5 million copies of Battlefield 3 worldwide in its first week according to internal numbers, making the sequel one of the big games of 2011. That makes the new shooter from DICE the fastest-selling game in the history of EA. The outstanding retail performance is driven by critic’s reviews averaging above 85 on console and above 90 on PC. Word-of-mouth from gamers is also driving sales – Battlefield 3 now has more than 2.5 million “likes” on Facebook and 200,000 followers on Twitter.

Electronic Arts and DICE have declared war. We all know the answer to who the first (and only) bombs are being dropped on, and if not, EA's marketing partners have made it quite obvious with their "Rise Above The Call (of Duty Modern Warfare 3)" ad campaign. And why not? Battlfield 3 has a leg up on the competition at least for a few more weeks.

Electronic Arts raised a lot of questions over the past couple of days when they explained how the game would require an install to a game system's hard drive in order to get high-definition visuals.  Now some information has surfaced on said install, and what kind of space will be required.  But the questions?  They still remain.

With Battlefield 3 pre-orders already topping a couple million copies with another week out, anticipation is building for developer DICE’s new game. Over 8 million people took part in the Battlefield 3 Beta, which resulted in some serious stats (see chart below the video). Battlefield 3 Producer Patrick Liu talks about Battlefield 3 in the exclusive video interview below.

NVIDIA CEO and president Jen-Hsun Huang joined up with game industry visionary and Battlefield 3 visual architect Johan Andersson to kick off the season’s hottest gaming event, GeForce LAN 6. The event took place October 14-16, 2011 on the Aircraft Carrier USS Hornet, in Alameda, California. The event featured 48 hours of non-stop PC gaming, fun contests, amazing prizes, and special stage presentations. 

Style and function come together with the Battfield 3 Vault. EA and Calibur11 team up for this exclusive customizable high-end case for your Xbox 360 Slim and PlayStation 3 Slim. Available later this year the Battlefield 3 Vault features a stunning Battlefield 3 smoke body, a 3-mode LED light up claymore, DICE logo smoke grenade and more. Not only stylish, the Battlefield 3 Vault also contains a performance grid that enhances cooling of your video game system by increasing airflow as well as a highly customizable body that allows owners the ability to attach a range of accessories including the popular controller holder.

It's only been two days since the Battlefield 3 beta went public for both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and players everywhere are rushing to download it and see what EA's proposed "Modern Warfare" killer has to offer.  So far, the feedback hasn't been the greatest, with users reporting a number of problems in-game, mainly with bugs, glitches and being unable to join games.  Will this possibly reflect on the final product?

Despite Activision's attempts to call a cease fire, the war of words between Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 continues on, with the developers pushing the envelope to make their war effort the better one this holiday season.  This time around, though, EA made a bold statement indicating that the Call of Duty series in general may not have much of a future.  But is that the case?