You know that whole Battlefield 3 open beta thing going on right now? According to DICE, it's a clear indicator that the game will exceed sales of DICE's previous effort, Bad Company 2 -- of course, pre-order numbers already kind of told us this. But when comparing number of simultaneous users in each of the betas, DICE says the Battlefield 3 beta has six times more concurrent players than the Bad Company 2 beta conducted in 2009.

Videogamer tried to delve deeper on the matter, dissecting data on Bad Company 2 to try and get a more concrete number. Bad Company 2, which sold 2.3 million in its first month, had a high of 230,000 simultaneous players online and an estimated 3.5 million downloads for its beta, likely exceeding that 230,000 figure -- using that number as a lowball base, Videogamer estimates the concurrent player count for the Battlefield 3 beta is 1.38 million players, at least. It's not exact science, but it's more than DICE is telling us.

Regardless, it appears DICE has a hit on its hands. Let's just hope the developer addresses concerns before the game launches on October 25.