Xbox Gaming in South Africa

Battlefield 3 vs Modern Warfare 3. It's the 'Ali vs Frazier' of our generation, isn't it? While these two heavy hitters prepare to go toe-to-toe later this year, EA has revealed that Battlefield 3 is already doing well as far as pre-orders go, recently hitting the 1.25 million mark.

"To date we have about 1.25 million pre-orders 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 till launch. So it's doing very well," said EA CFO Eric Brown, speaking at the Citi 2011 Tech Conference.

In a recent report by Gamasutra, Brown mentioned that EA will be spending more on marketing for Battlefield 3 than for the long-awaited Star Wars: The Old Republic, due to the shooter's shorter lifespan. "It's going to be a different spend curve," said Brown. "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 [Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3], and we intend to use that." 

Considering that the popular Bad Company 2 has sold a total of 5 million copies since launch, a pre-order figure of 1.25 million should mean that Battlefield 3 will easily blow its predecessor's sales figures away when it hits stores in October this year.