EA’s comments to investors at the end of July revealed that pre-order numbers for the publisher’s upcoming blockbuster Battlefield 3 were, at the time, sitting at roughly ten times those of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in a similar timeframe.

This achievement is quite outstanding considering Bad Company 2 went on to sell two million units on launch, no doubt spurred by healthy pre-order numbers of its own.

With just under two months to go until the release of Battlefield 3, what kinds of pre-order numbers are we looking at now, over a month since the initial ‘ten times greater than Bad Company 2’ claim was made?

Does 1.25 million pre-order units sound good to you? Because it should. Speaking at the Citi 2011 Tech Conference today, EA’s Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown made the new claim:

“To date we have about 1.25 million pre-orders on Battlefield 3, so it’s still well ahead of its predecessor title, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, in regards to pre-orders in the same number of weeks till launch. So it’s doing very well.”

With such impressive numbers, Battlefield 3 is expected to blow past current life-to-date sales for Bad Company 2, which currently sit at nine million units worldwide. Sales of Battlefield 3 will also be helped by the “pretty extensive” marketing campaign EA has planned for the game, and the publisher “intends to use” the two-and-a-half week advantage over EA’s competitor in the military shooter market, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Brown also revealed that the marketing budget for Battlefield 3 is greater than that of Star Wars: The Old Republic, EA and BioWare’s massively multiplayer online RPG. “It’s going to be a different spend curve,” Brown said, going on to reason that because Battlefield 3 will have a shorter lifespan than an MMO, it makes sense to spread awareness of The Old Republic over its more lengthy expected relevancy period.

Pre-orders for The Old Republic haven’t escaped market scrutiny, either, and although EA claims not to have exact numbers, pre-sales for this game are currently “tracking consistent[ly] with [its] expectations.”

A release for The Old Republic is expected in the fourth quarter of 2011, but this plan could easily change. Here’s Brown again:

“We’re not done until we’re done. … We’re not going to know with enough certainty to publicly announce a release date,” with plans to announce this date later this month, or in October, following the planned series of weekend beta tests for The Old Republic this month.

Source: Gamasutra