Strategy Informer  

DICE has revealed why there Battlefield 3 beta was limited to a small, vehicle-less map, before the 64 player Caspian Border map which includes tanks and jets was added. According to producer Patrick Liu, the map was chosen specifically to assist with the beta testing procedure.

Of course, PC players now have the opportunity to play the much larger 64-player Caspian Border map, complete with tanks and jets. According to Liu, Operation Metro map was the only map they could have used at the moment.

"Yeah, I think there's been a misunderstanding of the term 'beta test'! We ran the alpha tests with a rush map and we wanted to have some sort of reference so we could compare results – so we needed to have more-or-less the same map," Liu stated, "But we do understand the concerns that we didn't show a conquest map, but we have demoed Caspian Border, and we did run a conquest map as a limited PC-only test."

Liu also promised that there would be more Bad Company. "We haven't killed Bad Company! But we can only make so many games. Be patient – there might be something else coming up..." insisted Liu, "We always have a couple of projects going on – some of them die, but some are more fruitful. We don't have any plans to make Battlefield an annual title – we want to make it ourselves we don't want anyone else doing it! And no studio can make an annual franchise by themselves – well, the sports titles can but they're a very different breed."

Source: GameSpy

Related games: Battlefield 3 (PC)