Why we missed the Battlefield 3 review embargo

As some of you may know, the general embargo for publishing Battlefield 3 reviews online expired at 8.01am UK time this morning.

Eurogamer and many other websites only received finished console copies of the game yesterday morning. Our reviewer signed for his at 7am.

There were a few reviews online yesterday based on the PC version of the game. When it became apparent last week that there might be a distinction between timings for PC and console reviews, we asked for PC code but were told none was available. We still haven't been sent a PC copy of Battlefield 3 despite being told it is the leading version.

Throughout the last seven days we've also been told that a day-one patch would be released early this week that was essential to reviewing the game. In the event it turned out to be 167MB on Xbox 360.

Under the circumstances, our review is not ready for this morning's embargo.

However, our reviewer was able to play the game extensively at pre-release hands-on sessions and has been playing pretty much non-stop for 24 hours with the patch installed, so the review will hopefully be ready later today.

Meanwhile, disks are on their way to Digital Foundry so that Rich Leadbetter can put together our PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 face-off for the end of the week.

We don't know exactly why we've been put in a position where we can't review the game at the same time as other websites, but we have asked politely.

We're obviously disappointed by the circumstances, but we don't harbour any ill feeling towards DICE, for whom we have infinite respect and affection, and we won't let any of this nonsense cloud our analysis of a game we're really excited to finally play.