This Means War: Modern Warfare 3 site redirects to Battlefield 3

It’s primed to be the biggest video game showdown in years and now the Call of Duty/Battlefield war has erupted, with a website for the former linking users to the latter.

Expected to be the two biggest-selling games of the year, the developers for rival military shooters Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 have made no secret of their animosity for one another in the past.

Expected to be the firm underdog in the fight, Battlefield’s last installment, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, sold 6.5m copies, while autumn’s Call of Duty: Black Ops has sold 20m units and counting.

However, Call of Duty is believed to be in a position of threat for the first time in years, for three reasons: Modern Warfare 3 is utilising an existing engine instead of Battlefield 3’s stunning Frostbite 2 engine, publishers Activision are to introduce a divisive ‘Call of Duty Elite’ paid subscription service and lastly, the ongoing legal dispute between the fired creators of MW3’s development studio, Infinity Ward.

With that in mind, plenty of neutrals in online gaming forums are beginning to pledge their support for Battlefield 3, which might be the reason why pranksters behind http://www.modernwarfare3.com have ensured that the address automatically links back to Battlefield’s official page.

Is it all a harmless prank, or perhaps the work of EA themselves? It’s likely we’ll never know, but we can say is that the site was registered privately in 2009 via a proxy. Although it’s unlikely that EA were actually behind the URL, we imagine there are still plenty of angry faces at Activision’s HQ this morning.