Electronic Arts has announced that Battlefield 3‘s premium service has received 800,000 subscribers since its launch.
The service for DICE’s shooter launched two weeks ago and has since racked up nearly a million subscribers; an impressive figure, indeed. Naturally, EA shares the same sentiments with the company’s games chief Patrick Soderlund telling USA Today:
We are very pleased with the performance so far.
EA is also looking into implement the premium service seen in Battlefield 3 in other properties, with EA Labels boss Frank Gibeau explaining to GI.biz:
We had EA Sports subscription before Elite came out, so adding that component to the design is not a reaction. It’s something we’d always been considering and we had been looking at. We didn’t have it ready for launch and it took us some time to get it prepped. Having said that, they [Activision] did something really innovative and if your competitor does something innovative and you think it applies to what you can do, then there’s no harm in doing that.
Gibeau also believes EA’s premium service offers better value than Activision’s Call of Duty: Elite:
We actually think our Premium service exceeds what Elite does – from a value standpoint, from a content standpoint, and longer term we think that we can bring more properties into that offering and that’ll be great for the business.
Battlefield 3 has shipped over 15 million units since its late October launch last year.
