There has been some disappointment from console gamers over the fact that the console version of Battlefield 3 support 40 less players than the PC version: 24 vs. 64. DICE’s Patrick Bach, speaking to GameZone.de, said that they’d love to add 64 players to consoles, but that the hardware simply wouldn’t handle it, and that corners would have to be cut in order to support that many players. Bach said,
“Everything is a compromise. It’s not that we’re evil or stupid. We didn’t choose not to have more players – we would love to do 64 players on console but then we would have to cut away so much; people would get very upset that it looked worse, played worse and wasn’t as fun as the PC version. We would never do that because the fun is always more important.”
Bach also confirmed that jets would be available in conquest multiplayer maps on consoles, adding that if they upped the player limit, they’d have to remove vehicles because they demand a lot more CPU and network data. Bach assured that while console maps would be smaller, they wouldn’t be “cut in half”, but instead would be “compacted slightly” to increase the action.
Bad Company 2 supported only 24 players as well, but still featured fairly large maps and some intense action. We’re sure Battlefield 3 will match that, if not surpass it by a huge margin.