Ok first, to preface.  Please do not take my title or blog as an understanding that the IMPORTANT shooters coming out this fall are Battlefield 3 and MW3.  As far as I'm concerned Deus Ex HR is the single important shooter coming out this fall.  Rage has potential to be one of the important shooters.  The two I'm talking about are somewhat window dressing (for me).  Ok that being said lets talk about BF and MW.
 
I've scoured (or at least the last day's posts) the forums for talk about this, and haven't really seen much discussing this so I'm just going to come out with it.  I recorded spike's 5 sole hours of E3 coverage yesterday, so when I got home first thing I did was watch it, so basically I watched the Microsoft and EA conferences back to back.  The Microsoft conference started right away with the MW3 footage.  I thought it looked good, maybe I though it looked just like MW2, but wasn't horrid.  Then I watched a bunch of other games and  stuff I don't care about, then after drooling over Mass Effect 3, along came the Battlefield 3 footage.  Now since we've seen both games thus far I guess this isn't news.   But watching one then an hour later watching the other, I felt a strong contrast in the graphics quality of the two.  And now hearing how both games are coming out  within a month of each other, I'm just starting to think the following:
 
Will a release of a 'mainline' Battlefield game actually bring about real change or the end to the MW franchise (or it's dominance/prevalance in military shooters)?
 
I say this because I was somewhat shocked how much better BF3 looked.  My wife watched the whole thing with me and here's what she said when she saw the MW3 footage:
"That actually looks awesome."
Here's what she said when BF3 came on:
"That's insane.  It's like I'm watching tv war footage or something."
 
And that's my thoughts exactly.  MW looked fine, but BF3 seemed to be visually head and shoulders above.  I kinda feel that BC2 was like this as well, but the Bad Company series seems to have not gotten the attention a proper battlefield game would.   So anyways- thoughts?  Are you, like me, a little perplexed at how good Battlefield 3 looks, even in comparison to MW3, and a little disappointed at the lack of ambition on display in MW3.  Or are you finding both looking about the same, or not caring?
 
Also as an aside to this 'which game looks better discussion' I'd like to enter some casual observations:
 
Battlefield 1942 is almost 10 years old.  Battlefield 2 was released 3 years later, and between then and now there has been that Battlefield 2142 game (not interested...), and the two BC games (also battlefield 1943 on BC tech).  In almost that same time I feel like we've seen far more CoD titles.  Yet to me, battlefield has made the most progress.  
 
PS- looking closer at the franchise pages on giantbomb, I don't think the discrepancy in release schedule is as great, so maybe that's not true.  Meh.