Why do all games have to constantly run at 60FPS?

[visibleguy]

I'm trying to run FFX which runs at 30FPS natively on the PS2 however my laptop can only manage to run it at 60FPS some of the time and whenever it isn't and drops to <55FPS I get slowdown. How come I have to run a native 30FPS game at 60FPS to play at full speed?

[Amberion]

A television screen is interleaved. That means it's running at 30fps, double pass. A LCD or CRT monitor is not interleaved(usually). That means it's running at 60 fps, single pass.

The console is still rendering 60 frames every second, except it has to render 2 frames for every viewable frame.