Battlefield 1943 Heading to Coral Sea

While the news of Battlefield 1943’s June launch date came and went today EA is discussing their initial plans to expand the game after launch using a Community Challenge. The worldwide player community will be working together to unlock the reward and when everyone playing the game amasses 43 Million kills then a new version of the classic Battlefield 1942 map: “Coral Sea” will become available to everyone who owns the game.

Adding a bonus map as a challenge point is a nice promotional tool for EA, since the initial game will only feature 3 maps – Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and Wake Island – for its $15 asking price. This updated, console oriented approach to revitalizing the classic online game series might just catch on.

Battlefield 1943 is designed to support 24-player combats in a much more limited scope than the original PC title but features some upgraded graphics, destructible environments, and the vehicle-centric gameplay elements the series originally made popular. Unlike the former PC entry, 1943 is centered only on the US Marine vs. Imperial Navy campaigns – as the settings would indicate since the Germans never landed at Iwo Jima and the US Army is not well known for amphibious assaults.

Battlefield 1943 will be available in June on PSN and Xbox Live, and in September the delayed PC version will appear. Lets hope this experiment convinced EA and DICE to give us a complete update to the classic multiplayer games. Despite being fatigued by WWII shooters I still have fond memories of LAN party battles featuring 45 players in El Alamein.