Battlefield 3 still lagging behind two Call of Duty games on Xbox Live

By Adam Rosenberg November 5, 2011

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Here’s an interesting blip on the Xbox 360 radar. The most recent online play rankings for Xbox Live put Battlefield 3 behind not one, but two Call of Duty games: Black Ops and 2009’s Modern Warfare 2. Electronic Arts threw a lot of words around about Battlefield‘s dominance in the months leading up to the DICE shooter’s release and even though the game has sold 5 million copies and currently leads 2011 in sales, it is now chowing down on some well-deserve humble pie.

There are a few factors working against the EA game here. For one, Battlefield 3 has been fraught with online play issues since it launched, particularly on the Xbox Live front. What’s more, it was recently revealed that Duty players could look forward to in-game rewards in next week’s Modern Warfare 3 for each previous game in the series that they’d gone Prestige (ie maxed out and reset their multiplayer progression progress) in.

The rankings are really just further proof that Battlefield 3 has suffered from a rocky launch. The multiplayer will probably gel once DICE gets a few more updates out the door and the server issues are worked out. I don’t think anyone ever really expected Battlefield to completely dominate the Xbox Live rankings, but it’s a little surprising to see it falling behind a pair of one- and two-year-old games.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…

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