Battlefield 3 beta is ready, DICE waiting for Sony and Microsoft
Waiting for green light 


According to a new report emerging from French Battlefield portal planete-battlefield.fr, Battlefield’s French community representative “Kusa” has spilled the beans on the status of the Battlefield 3 beta: it’s ready for release, and the only thing DICE is waiting for is a content approval from Microsoft and Sony, in order to get the beta running on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The PC version is ready as well, but DICE is holding back in order to get a simultaneous beta release across all platforms.

So far this is unconfirmed by DICE, but considering that Microsoft and Sony usually take at least a week or two in order to approve content (whether it’s DLC, game download, etc.), it’s not entirely unrealistic to assume that the beta is in fact ready, and that all we (and DICE) are waiting for is a go-ahead from the console makers.
Battlefield 3 ships with 9 maps, all maps support all 5 game modes


DICE’s Alan Kertz, one of the lead designers of Battlefield 3 (and an avid Tweeter), has confirmed that Battlefield 3 will ship with 9 maps, a fact we’ve known since GamesCom. However, Kertz also revealed that all 5 game modes — Conquest, Conquest 64, Rush, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch — will be available on all 9 maps.

In addition to the 9 maps, those who have pre-ordered Battlefield 3 (1.25 million of you), will be getting additional 4 maps from the Back to Karkand expansion pack: Strike At Karkand, Gulf of Oman, Sharqi Peninsula and Wake Island. Back to Karkand is scheduled for release approximately 1 month after the release of Battlefield 3.
DICE: Battlefield is unaffected by piracy, DRM isn’t the solution
XBOX also got piracy ma... =_=

Piracy is still a huge problem for PC gaming, where, in some markets, the piracy rates are upwards of 90%. In a recent interview with GameSpot, DICE’s Karl Magnus-Troedsson said that piracy didn’t affect the Battlefield series because the games require an online connection and account, but that doesn’t mean the studio has no experience with piracy. Troedsson said:

 

However, when it comes to a solution for piracy, DICE and Troedsson aren’t big believers in the DRM solutions that some publishers have used, publishers like Ubisoft which require PCs to have a constant connection to a DRM server.

   

Piracy has driven many PC-only developers, like DICE, to create their games for consoles as well, as a way of justifying the high cost of game development where games tend to cost upwards of $20 million to develop. Unless it’s an MMO, it’s very hard for a PC-only game with that kind of budget to return the investment if 90% of players pirate the game.