In an effort to prove Battlefield 3 is a much bigger deal than Bad Company 2, DICE has revealed that the threequel's current open beta has six times the number of simultaneous players than its previous release

The news should stop there really, but Videogamer decided to do a bit of digging.

The website reports that Battlefield: Bad Company 2's beta had about 230,000 simultaneous players. By multiplying that number by six, the website concludes that the concurrent player count for the Battlefield 3 beta is at about 1.38 million. Take the numbers with a pinch of salt, but the maths makes sense.

Either way, there are lots of people playing the beta. Now EA has to hope that those people enjoying the game for free will plump up £40 to enjoy it proper.