SAN FRANCISCO – Electronic Arts has had success in virtual warfare over the past few years. The game company has sold 12 million copies of Battlefield 3 since last fall. EA used GDC 2012 to outline its battle plan for this year for both of its key war games. Battlefield 3 will see three new DLC expansions this year, including Close Quarters, Armored Kill and End Game.

Karl Magnus Troedsson, General Manager of DICE, promised plenty of diverse action in this year’s three new expansions. For the first time ever on consoles, players will be able to customize servers and set them up exactly as they want to play Battlefield 3. While this has been a feature on PC for a long time, it’s something completely new for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and is something fans have been asking for.

“The feedback we get from fans is quite wide and it comes from different angles and different groups of people,” said Troedsson. “When we build a pack like Close Quarters, we had decided to focus on one part of that feedback, both what we hear verbally and what we see on the Internet, but also what we actually see from the telemetry data. What we have seen is that a lot of people really like the tight urban maps that we have in the game, especially Operation Metro, which is the most played map. That’s what we decided that the second expansion pack that we put out there should be about really focusing on that infantry, and indoor, very tight gameplay.”
 Armored Kill ups the ante for vehicular battles. This expansion features drivable tanks, ATVs, mobile artillery, and jet fighters.

“We are not announcing that much about Armored Kill here today, but we are going to bring you one of the biggest maps that we have ever done in the Battlefield franchise history in this expansion,” said Troedsson. “That was not a goal, per se; that we were striving towards. The goal was to utilize all the vehicles and create something very big with them. It then turned out when we built this map, whoa! This is really big, and it works really well, as well. We started measuring it, and then we saw that it actually is the biggest map that we’ve ever done.”

While DLC will keep Battlefield 3 gamers busy online, EA is offering a brand new war shooter this October 23rd with Medal of Honor Warfighter. The new game from developer Danger Close is being built on the Frostbite 2 Engine, but it offers a very different experience both in its single player and multiplayer warfare.

“This is the biggest Medal of Honor game ever made,” said Greg Goodrich, executive producer, Medal of Honor Warfighter. “With medal of Honor we introduced the Tier 1 Operator, the most precise, aggressive and deliberate warrior in the US military. This year we’re pulling out of Afghanistan and getting into the global fight. Every mission has a dotted line to real-world events. Every week we read new headlines that could be pulled from our story. Sometimes the line between reality and fiction is too close to call.”

In the game’s multiplayer, gamers around the world will be able to “fight for the home team” with 12 Tier 1 Operators from around the globe. The Australian SASR, British SAS, German KSK and polish GROM are just some of the soldiers that will be available in the multiplayer maps because, as Goodrich said, not every kid wants to be a US Navy SEAL.

EA has two very diverse offerings to keep shooter fans happy throughout the year, and beyond. And the war for online supremacy will now have three big games, set in modern times, duking it out for players’ time and money.