If you have any questions regarding Battlefield 3, please feel free to ask them in our Discussion Forum. They will be answered and later added to this page.
Battlefield 3 is a game in development by Digital Illusions CE in Sweden and will be published by Electronic Arts. The Battlefield Series has a great many games in it most recently Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142. In the battlefield games you play in a game mode known as Conquest mostly, where two factions fight for control points. The faction that either owns all points and eliminates all enemy forces wins, or the one that controls more points for a longer period of time. Each faction has multiple classes you can chose from, with each class fulfilling a different function. Maps can be small or rather large and feature beside infantry combat a lot of vehicle combat as well, which includes helicopters, jets, boats, tanks, jeeps and more. Battlefield 3 will be set in a modern day time period ("now" +/- a few years), while other battlefield games range from the far past up to the distant future.
Considering how much money Battlefield made for DICE and EA, it would be foolish not to continue with this franchise. Battlefield 3 is the next logic step, plus it has been mentioned by EA officials in a covert sort of way [1]. If it would not come out, it would be surprising.
No. This has already been clarified. Battlefield: Bad Company is not Battlefield 3.
No. Again, this has been officially clarified, it is not Battlefield 3. Battlefield Heroes is not Battlefield 3.
Unknown at this point. The only vague detail that is floating around is 2008 which most likely means fall/before christmas in 2008. It can easy be changed to 2009 though, we simply do not know for sure at this point.
That is the projected release of Battlefield: Bad Company. It has been named "Battlefield 3" by some shops and a few other places, which of course is wrong. On top of that, Bad Company has been delayed now and will be out during late summer most likely.
No. In the Info we have gathered so far Vista and MacOSX are mentioned but not XP. But at the same time it is mentioned that it builds upon the Frostbite DX engine. As mentioned in an older news the engine is capable of running on a multitude of platforms, among them Windows XP with DirectX 9 and Shader Model 3. It also supports DX10 for Vista and the consoles Xbox 360 and PS3 at the moment. So there is no technical hurdle that it would not come out on XP, besides that an interesting Steam survey shows that over 82% of steam gamers still have XP and vista in total only gets about 15%. It would be madness to release a game like this in a situation like this, for Vista only. And for any faults anyone could find in DICE and EA, they are not known to make decisions like this that would cost them millions in revenue.
Yes. It has been leaked that it will be also available for MacOSX and Vista.
Unknown. From what is visible on the Battlefield Bad Company Screenshots it's a step up from Battlefield 2142. If you can run BF2142 at maximum you should be able to run BF3 decently. In case of doubt, get the BF2142 demo version and try it out. There also pretty surely will be a Battlefield 3 Demo out, so you can test it with the real thing as well. Two things to keep in mind is that Battlefield since it's first versions always has been a memory hog. 2 GB of memory is useless to most games, while Battlefield really profits from it. More memory is always better there (32bit systems only can handle 3 though, keep that in mind). Secondly, Battlefield has large view areas. Battlefield 3 will have even longer view distances than previous games, in all likelihood. So you will need a GPU that has a good punch to it. Usually GPUs come out in 3 stages, the high end, the medium and the low end. Mediums are just a little below the high end in performance but are half or even less in price. Go for those and you will have a good experience for sure, but most likely wont have every setting on maximum.
Battlefield 3 will include those again, like they were present in Battlefield 2 and 2142. Also included are commander and squads system, as well as the new "Battalions". There are some numbers concerning unlocks vehicles and so on, on the info page, but this is can all change until we see a release, so take it with a grain of salt. More details are not yet known.
Unknown, but likely. The info we currently have counts 48 vehicles, 24 for each side, giving each archetype of vehicle 3 vehicles per side and still has some spare. So it is highly likely we will see some jets in there.
There will be 5 classes: Sniper, Assault, Engineer, Medic and Support. No details other than this have been revealed about them yet. So it is not known which class will take over the Recon/Spec ops position from previous games, nor the Anti-Tank position.
A total of 56 weapons will be available in the game. 34 are base weapons (17 per faction) which means that each class has at least 3 weapons as standard. 22 weapons are unlocks which can be earned over time. It is unclear if everyone can use them, but it is pretty certain that once unlocked you can use them no matter which side you are on. Presumably weapon unlocks are class specific again, so you can't unlock a sniper rifle and then use it as a medic.
