EA claims 1.25m Battlefield 3 pre-orders

Battlefield 3 has racked up an impressive 1.25 million pre-orders with more than a month still to go before it launches, publisher EA has claimed.

CFO Eric Brown announced the figure during a presentation at the Citi 2011 Tech Conference today, as reported by Gamasutra.

“To date we have about 1.25 million preorders on Battlefield 3, so it’s still well ahead of its predecessor title, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, in regards to pre-orders in the same number of weeks until launch. So it’s doing very well,” he said.

Bad Company 2 has sold over five million copies since its launch in March last year.

Brown added that EA plans to spend more on marketing the DICE-developed shooter than it does on BioWare MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, by virtue of it being a packaged game with a shorter expected lifespan

“It’s going to be a different spend curve,” he explained.

“We have a pretty extensive campaign planned for Battlefield 3. We have the advantage of a two-and-a-half week early launch window versus our competitor [Modern Warfare 3], and we intend to use that.”