EA has today announced that the publisher’s recently released military-themed first-person shooter, Battlefield 3, has gone on to sell an incredible five million units during its first week on sale, worldwide.

This achievement makes Battlefield 3 the fastest-selling game in EA’s history as “great reception from critics” and “player word-of-mouth” were attributed to reasons behind the exception sales figures. El33tonline can be counted amongst those that gave Battlefield 3 a “great reception” - read our review of the game here to find out why it’s a must-have action title!

This news arrives on the back of the announcement that EA had shipped ten million units of Battlefield 3 to retailers worldwide - the largest first-day shipment in the company’s history - as well as the reveal that the game had effortlessly topped the UK software sales chart following its release last week.

“While some players experienced intermittent disruption of online services due to high volume,” reads a press release, “internal estimates show that servers and service uptime stabilized to roughly 98.9% throughout the weekend, ensuring that players were connected and enjoying the game.

“With a commitment to support the game as a software service,” the release continues, “EA is listening to consumer feedback and is making daily updates and improvements to ensure an optimal online experience for all.”

Sales figures aside, here are a few other EA records that Battlefield 3 has broken:

• 2.5 Million Facebook ‘likes’ with hundreds of thousands of fans actively engaged
• Over 200K followers on Twitter
• Battlefield 3 fans executed 73 million saviour kills, 48 million revives and destroyed 67 million vehicles

It’ll be a while before we tire of the current set of maps, weapons, vehicles and abilities in Battlefield 3, but look out for the ‘Back to Karkand’ expansion which arrives in December - get the details and first screenshots over here.