Alan Kertz the Core Gameplay Designer on Battlefield 3 has recently commented on a number of things to do with Battlefield 3 including the much lower console player limit.
Firstly Kertz revealed that snipers will be slightly improved in the aspect of bullet live time by saying, “All bullets had a standard time to live, the sniper rounds will be getting an increase in the future.” Kertz later on replied to a question about the console player limit say that they wouldn’t up the limit on “this generation” of consoles.