Watch Dogs will run at 900p/30FPS on PS4, and 792p/30FPS on Xbox One.
Oh dear. First Watch Dogs was 1080p/60FPS on the PS4… then it wasn’t, then it was again, but now it looks like Ubisoft has come down with the hammer to confirm final resolutions and framerates for the game on both PS4 and Xbox One. Watch Dogs will run at 900p/30FPS on PS4, and 792p/30FPS on Xbox One, according to the official Ubisoft blog post on the matter.
“Resolution is a number, just like framerate is a number. All those numbers are valid aspects of making games,” said Creative Director Jonathan Morin. While most next-gen (and many last-gen) games strive to offer native 1080p, Morin belives it is much more important “to deliver an amazing next-gen experience than it is to push a few more pixels onto a screen.”
He went on to say that the scope and scale of Watch Dogs compared to a standard “corridor shooter” is completely different. “People tend to look at corridor shooters, for example, where there’s a corridor and all the effects are on and it’s unbelievable, and they forget that if you apply those same global effects to an open city with people around and potential car crashes and guys in multiplayer showing up without warning, the same effect is applied to a lot of dynamic elements that are happening in every frame.”
As for what Ubisoft was doing during the game’s most recent delay if not optmizing the resolution, “that extra time was spent ensuring the team could fully realize their vision for Watch Dogs, polishing all aspects of the gameplay and making sure hacking is fully integrated into every system,” claims Morin.
“[The hacking stuff] is important. Resolution has nothing to do with that. That’s why stuff like resolution can scale a bit down so that we never compromise the soul of Watch Dogs.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought we were to expect 1080p/60FPS as the standard with this generation? I would especially have expected to see it on such a big-name title as Watch Dogs. I also don’t buy Morin’s excuse, as almost all PC gamers will tell you that having a game run at native resolution with a steady framerate makes for a much better experience than watching a “pretty slideshow”.
Source: Ubisoft
