The incredible shrinking battlefield of Battlefield 3

In the context of talking about a demo of Battlefield 3 at a Chicago comics convention, this blog mentions that the console version will support 24 players, whereas the PC version will support 64 players and larger maps. Which is fine and all. Some very good games support only 24 players. Killzone 3 is just fine with 24 players, although it doesn’t have tanks, helicopters, and planes zipping around. Homefront seems to get along just fine when the vehicles roll in, and it’s only got 32 players and pretty expansive maps.

But I do have to wonder what a tricky act it is to balance gameplay when the console version will have such a markedly different player density. I guess the bottom line is that one of the reasons MAG and Killzone 3 are so good — one with 256 players, the other with 24, and both exclusive to the Playstation 3 — is that they only have to make and tune one version of the game.