Why is there only 24 player max?

I heard it was something to do with the PSN and XBOX LIVE networks not allowing that much traffic as it would smash bandwidths.  But I don't know how true that is.

They should be able to easily break the 24 player mark with BF4 if it is on the next generation consoles. As it sits right now the hardware can't support more players without lower graphic fidelity, frame rate, or stability. Don't blame DICE or EA from the limitation sof your 6 year old hardware.

Consoles hardware is just too old to run BF3 with 64 player on large maps, you wouldnt be able to run BF3 on 6 year old PC too

Because battlefield 3 multiplayer would be very very very laggy if you will put more players.But you know MAG on PS3? it has more than 200 players because that game hasn't destruction, good graphics and other things.So these consoles wouldn't run 64 players on Battlefield 3 with this good destruction,amazing graphics and other things and physics.

Consoles are old tech. They would probably blow up.

It would be laggy, due to connection and the frame rate would be so low, it would make you want to cry. to increase the player count, they would most likely have to dumb down the graphics majorly. And out of xbox and ps3, PS3 is the one that can handle high player counts, such as MAG and Dust 514.

Yip, you guessed it, PC rules!!!!

This link explains it totally:

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654489897822148/

Very High lag on consoles, Very frequent framedrops etc etc

There are enough useful answers above, but I'd like to throw in that you shouldn't start yelling that your platform is the best on here. This is not the right place to shove the benefits of your platform into someone's face when it's absolutely not related to the question.