This story is a little surprising. BF3 Blog have done the legwork on this: first they spotted that Battlefield 3 on the PS3 and 360 is going to have an in-game server browser for multiplayer game-finding. Good for them. However, where this story turns sour is the news that the PC version will not have any in-game server browser, and to find a multiplayer game you have to exit the game or Alt-Tab out of it, and use the “Battlelog” application to launch games. Senior Gameplay Designer Alan Kertz has been assuring everyone that the process is relatively smooth, but why? And, if it has to be in another app, why isn’t there a server browser in Origin’s overlay? Why is there another system to complicate things? Ah, of course, because Battelog wants to be the free equivalent of Activision’s Elite thingum, with all that social and achievement stuff that you play games for.

[Edit – oops, we got that last bit slightly wrong. Those elements of Elite will, in fact, also be free, as will most of its core features. The exact nature of Elite’s paid extra bits has yet to be announced, but from the relatively scant information we have so far would appear to be bonus content-based rather than related to social kinda stuff like this.]

Tune in next week for: mouse controls only on the PS3?!

Cheers R-F for flagging this one up in the forums.