BF Heroes effectively "already out"

DICE bigwig Ben Cousins has said there will be no big release for Battlefield Heroes, but rather a closed beta to expand so much that "every hardcore gamer in the world will probably be able to get a key if they want to".

"We're not going to turn on a switch one day and suddenly our audience gets 100 times bigger," Cousins told GamesIndustry.biz.

"We're going to have a very large closed beta almost to the point where every hardcore gamer in the world will probably be able to get a key if they want to - it would just be within a closed beta so that we can control the size of it to a degree."

His expectation is that the closed beta will be as big as the current online community in Battlefield: Bad Company.

Cousins also explained that recent talk of Battlefield Heroes being delayed was misleading as, to him, the game is effectively "already out".

"It's an interesting difference between a packaged-goods product, like our previous Battlefield games, in that there is no real kind of big splash release date where suddenly it's available - it kind of builds up over time... The game will kind of sneak out and before you know it, it will be a fairly big game even though we're in the closed beta and we're not 'released'," said Cousins.

Battlefield Heroes is the free-to-play, web-based and ad-funded cartoon spin-off in the popular online shooter series. The game oozes charm and features some rather compelling MMO-style mechanics to keep you going back for more.

Head over to our hands-on impressions of Battlefield Heroes to find out more.