Battlefield Play4Free senior producer James Salt told us this week at GDC that the game's closed beta granted access to 600,000 participants; who obviously weren't all online at the same time. He explained that's why for the open beta, starting in April, Easy studio is planning a staggered launch, to avoid a massive "day one" spike of concurrent players that would crash the game.

Asked about a Mac version of the free-to-play title, Salt said the game runs on the fifth generation of the Battlefield engine, which was designed for PC. Even if a Mac version could be ported, the update schedule required for a title like this would necessitate a seperate Mac team at Easy for the game -- which isn't currently in place.

"It still might happen," Salt added. "But it's going to be quite a fight to make it be [on Mac]."