Battlefield 3 preorders over 1.25 million already, beating Bad Company 2

[jkipp82]

EA's CFO Eric Brown announced at the Citi 2011 Tech Conference today that Battlefield 3 has already racked up 1.25 million pre-orders,

putting it "well ahead" of the previous Battlefield title, Bad Company 2, at the same time leading up to launch. Over ten times more, in fact.

That game sold 2.3 million copies in the first month of release, and has sold over 9 million copies according to the most recent financial reports, so presumably, Battlefield 3 is on track to do even better than that. Brown said that EA expects to make full use of "the advantage of a two-and-a-half week early launch window versus our competitor," Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Brown also spoke about pre-orders for EA's other big release this fall, Star Wars: The Old Republic, but declined to provide actual numbers. Star Wars: The Old Republic will have a smaller marketing budget than Battlefield 3 at launch, but EA expects to support it over a longer length of time. Brown said that SW:TOR would have "a different spend curve," but that demand so far "is tracking consistent with our expectations."