Battlefield 3 MP beta has 12 million simultaneous players

DICE has announced that 12 million people are simultaneously playing the ongoing Battlefield 3 multiplayer beta- that is six times as much as Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s numbers, which attracted 2 million players with its MP beta in January 2010.

The biggest reason for running the Open Beta is to stress test our servers and back end,” DICE general manager Karl Magnus Troedsson wrote on the Battlefield Blog. “

Already, we are seeing six times the number of simultaneous players in the Battlefield 3 Open Beta compared to the Beta for Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The fact that Battlefield 3 is clearly our biggest game launch ever by a magnitude of six makes it doubly important to test everything.

“We are constantly updating the News section on Battlelog with information on what we are fixing from Open Beta to final. We appreciate your time and your feedback. The data and feedback from the Open Beta will not only directly affect the final game of Battlefield 3, but its future development and support.”

But there have been some negative comments about the beta, and the feedback hasn’t exactly been as DICE would have wanted. We, ourselves, said in our impressions that the beta had several issues.

Troedsson said that the beta was a version of the game that’s more than a month old and not representative of the final game.

“The Battlefield 3 Open Beta is based on software that is more than one month old,” he said. “We need to test the new back end dedicated server structure we’ve built. Not only have we built a new game engine, but an entirely new back end system so that everyone can enjoy the benefits of dedicated servers on all platforms.

“Just like normal procedure when releasing a game, the Open Beta has had long lead times due to testing, certification, and setting up. This means that the code you are now playing is actually quite early and not representative of the final game.

“We had to do this in order to have as many people testing as possible, in order to ensure a top quality experience when the game is released. However, we’re confident in the Battlefield formula and confident that our fans will support us in order to make Battlefield 3 better.”

DICE made a list of changes they would be making to the final game after taking the feedback on the beta into consideration. Read the list here. A few days ago, they also said that they’re pushing the PS3 and it’s limits ‘big-time’.

Battlefield 3 releases later this month for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Stay tuned for more info.