Battlefield 3's awe-inspiring tank battle demonstration at E3 was run on a PC, and it wasn't to make a statement about mouse-and-keyboard superiority. The game, according to developer DICE, will run at 60 frames per second on the PC—but 30 fps on the Xbox 360 and PS3.
Call of Duty's latest entries run at 60 fps, both PC and console, to deliver that smoove gameplay. Of course, Battlefield 3 is touting a higher level of visual detail, including fully destructible environments, larger maps, etc.
While 30 fps sounds pretty crap, this isn't unprecedented; Crysis 2 ran at 30 fps on consoles. And Battlefield 3's PS3 demonstration, in Luke's eyes, was still pretty good-looking.
To repeat, Battlefield 3 is 60 fps on the PC, which it had better goddamn well be. I don't want to imagine the rioting if it were anything less. Such things matter intensely to the glorious PC gaming master race. Do they matter for the console peasants?
Battlefield 3 to run in 720p, 30 fps on Consoles [Battlefield 3 Blog]