Modern Warfare 3 trying to get all up in Battlefield's face with 32-player multiplayer?

It's getting interesting, this whole Modern Warfare 3/Battlefield 3 feud. You see for all the posturing, chest-shoving, "My dad's bigger than your dad"/"Yeah, well screw you, my dad's Spider-Man" nonsense we've been seeing between Activision and EA since it transpired that the feudal kings of modern military combat would be releasing just two weeks apart, a stealthy gaze between the lines shows more mutual appreciation than outright dissing. Well either that, or mutually-assured arse-covering.

It seems neither game wants to be pulled up on lacking anything the other game has. Battlefield is pushing a much bigger campaign focus than usual this time, and is including both a straight Team Deathmatch mode and co-op missions. And MW3, if this leak is to be assumed genuine, is cranking up the scale of its multiplayer significantly over its 2009 precursor.

Coming by way of an archetypal mysterious leak-man of the internet (this time supposedly one who snuck footage away from the demo pods being set up at this week's mammoth Call of Duty XP fan convention in L.A.), a couple of screens and a now-deleted YouTube video seem to show a 32-player mode in MW3's multiplayer component, as well as a new game mode called 'Bomb'.

With Modern Warfare 2 being player-capped at 18 across the board (including PC), and Infinity Ward having stated player-to-map-size balance as the reason, does this imply a focus on much bigger, more tactical battles on far more expansive territory? Could well be another instance of rival-game box ticking here if this turns out to be true. And an interesting one, seeing as Battlefield 3 is currently indicating a 24-player cap, aside from the PC's 64-player conquest mode.

Of course, the rumoured increase to the MW3 limit might only happen on the PC (we have no idea which format these screens come from, if they're real), but given that the PC version of MW2 received the same balance-related cap as everyone else, the case for bigger maps still stands.

Whatever the truth, we'll all find out when Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer is debuted at Call of Duty XP between the 2nd and 3rd of September. But where do you stand, in this ludicrously fabricated turf war between the two games (because I'm legally obligated to ask at this point)? Are you a CoD player excited by the idea of bigger, more balanced combat? And if you're a Battlefield player, would extra scale be enough to turn your eye to Call of Duty, or are there more important things at play than just how big the maps are and how many people are running around them?

Source: SFX-360

August 30, 2011