For those of us chomping eagerly at the bit for more news about Swordfish Studios' 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Sony PS3, then here's some news that have some good parts and potentially bad parts. But all in all, things are looking pretty good for Fiddy and his crew, as Swordfish Studios is pretty much doing things by the book in terms of game development.

So, good news first: the game will feature an online co-op mode that's pretty convenient. Described by game director Julian Widdows as "drop-drop out, absolute hot swap," players can choose on the fly which character they want to play as, as well as have complete control on when they want to join in a co-op game or leave out of it. We're interested as to how they'll handle it, game-wise - would it be like a chopper or something dropping off one of Fiddy's friends, to help him in the battle? That would certainly be awesome.

Now for the potentially-upsetting news. It seems that the game itself is going to be locked at 30 frames per second, as opposed to the 60 fps golden standard of today's next-gen games. When asked about this decision, Julian Widdows had an answer:

Historically we’ve found that as long as you have consistent 30, then that’s absolutely fine for a shooter. The 60 mantle is a difficult one to achieve, especially when you’re going for the graphical quality we’re going for.

When you drop down from 60, it all feels pretty rough. However at consistent 30, even if you drop a frame occasionally you never really notice it, so that’s the decision behind that.

Well, that certainly makes sense. If you remember one of the Sony PlayStation 2's launch titles, Killzone, they did the same thing - and it turned out to be a pretty good game in itself. Let's hope that it's the same with 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. Updates as we get them!