I'm tired of people talking about how CoD: Modern Warfare 3 will be running at 60 FPS on consoles and how Battlefield 3 is only running at 30 FPS on consoles. From a technical standpoint, this is getting ridiculous. It doesn't matter. The developers of Modern Warfare 3 went on to boast about how 60 FPS is awesome by saying this:

"I don’t really know. I mean we really re-vamped this engine. We put a whole new audio system in and it is as competitive as anybody out there. You can go out and name your engine and call it whatever you want, right. You know, I’ve done that before; I’ve seen that trick and the bottom line is, this game will run at 60 frames a second. Not sure any of our competitors will.

Not sure I’ve seen any of our competitors on the console especially running at 60 frames a second and I’d be a little scared at this point — in June — if I was looking forward to a particular game that wasn’t on the console and running at 60. And I think 60 is our competitive edge and you just don’t throw that away…

…So I don’t know what the future holds for the engine. But you don’t ship an engine, you ship a game."

Here is the problem: 60 frames per second (FPS) is cool and all, but does this open up room for innovation. Non-scripted events? Better graphics (It looks pretty good, but not good enough to fit into today's graphics)? New gameplay?

- Halo: Reach ran at a capped 30 FPS, it ran very well.
- Crysis 2 ran at a capped 30 FPS, it was a very beautiful game and ran very well (If anything, fantastic) on a console.
- Battlefield: Bad Company 2 ran at a capped 30 FPS, and it ran very well.
- Gears of War 2 ran at a capped 30 FPS, and it ran very well.

Boasting about how you have 60 FPS in a game is a joke. As long as the game runs at a steady framerate, which in the cases I listed above apply to this, it will run as smooth as a game at 60 FPS. More than 90% of console games run at a capped 30 FPS.

Battlefield 3 for consoles may be capped at 30 FPS and have "lower" graphical (Seriously, it won't be as bad as many people think... Seeing the gameplay that was shown on the PS3) quality. Also put this into consideration about the quality of the graphics: Most of the graphics we have seen in the Fault Line video series were achieved because of the DirectX 11 API (Something consoles and even the Xbox don't use). Want to see a big difference between DirectX 9 and DirectX 11? Take a look at Crysis 2's DX9 to DX11 update (The PDF file showcasing the changes between Crysis 2 on DirectX 9 and DirectX 11).

So... Open up to innovation (Gameplay, graphics and technical improvements) and run at 30 FPS or stay the same and introduce new material and run at 60 FPS? Your choice. Modern Warfare 3 will stick to it's formula, that's cool. I'll probably buy it in 2012. Battlefield 3 is on my mind and is going to receive a buy from me.