Is The Game Industry Dropping The 60 FPS Standard?

By Kevin Parrish
published

Nicolas Guérin, World Level Design Director on Assassin's Creed Unity, recently spoke with TechRadar about running the game at 30 frames per second. He said that part of the decision to lock the framerate had to do with giving the game a "cinematic gloss," which was already hard enough to emulate at 30 frames per second.

"At Ubisoft, for a long time we wanted to push 60 fps," Guérin admitted. "I don't think it was a good idea because you don't gain that much from 60 fps and it doesn't look like the real thing. It's a bit like The Hobbit movie, it looked really weird."

He also pointed to the Rachet and Clank series, which supposedly dropped the 60 frames per second standard. That said, he believes that the gaming industry on a whole is dropping the mission to achieve 60 frames per second because it's twice as hard to achieve. And in terms of rendering quality of the picture and image, 60 frames per second isn't all that great, he indicated.

Alex Amancio, the game's Creative Director, also chimed in, saying that 60 frames per second is excellent for first-person shooters, but not all that great for action adventure titles. He added that 30 frames per second "feels better" and allows the developer to "push the limits of everything to the maximum."

"It's like when people start asking about resolution. Is it the number of the quality of the pixels that you want? If the game looks gorgeous, who cares about the number?" Amancio said.

News of the framerate lock arrives after Bethesda revealed a way for PC gamers to alter the framerate in The Evil Within by using debug commands that can alter both the framerate and aspect ratio. However, the game, according to the company, was meant to be played at 30 frames per second and is locked at that rate on the consoles.

Do we really need the game to run at 60 frames per second, or will 30 do just fine? Keeping a game at the 30 frames per second limit supposedly allows developers to cram more into each frame, which means better visuals for gamers.

As for Assassin's Creed Unity, it will be made available on Windows PC, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 here in the United States on November 11.

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Kevin Parrish
263 Comments Comment from the forums
  • red77star
    Obviously two cancers of gaming industry called XBOX One and PS4 can't push a **** as far as games goes beyond 30FPS therefore I understand ******* this guys speaks of. At the same time PC Industry is going toward 4K on 60+ FPS which will not be achievable by ***** consoles in at least 4-5 years. 30FPS is unplayable no matter what type of game we speak of. I think Ubisoft finds themselves in a bigger problem and that is that PC game sale decimates Console sales but since they are committed to companies who made two **** boxes (XBOX, Play Station) they are worried to lose so much money having people not buy port **** running 30FPS. It would be costly for them to develop a game they it should be on PC Gaming and then redevelop same thing for **** cans which cannot push anything beyond 30FPS at 1080p. - message edited by mod, OP please watch the language.
    Reply
  • Armisael
    I think we absolutely should drop 60fps as the standard.

    C'mon guys, move up to 120fps already.
    Reply
  • Silent Ricochet
    So basically, developers want to stop trying to achieve 60fps because of consoles. Am I getting this right? Because 30 fps in pretty much every game I play is the bare minimum of smooth gameplay. Battlefield at 30 fps? Horrible. Company of Heroes at 30 fps? Horrible. Films have motion blur, video games have stupid fake motion blur that detracts from the game. When I play a video game I want to feel like I'm a part of it, not like I'm watching a movie. Why have monitors and televisions that refresh at 60, 120, 144 and 240hz when these idiots want to limit their AAA titles to 30 fps? This just seems like an excuse so they can have an even, albeit worse, image quality and frame rate across all platforms.
    Reply
  • icemunk
    They're trying to set the bar lower, because 4K displays are becoming more and more common; but we don't quite have the horsepower needed with current mid-range GPUs, so if you can cut the frames in half and set that as a new standard, voila! Problem solved? (not really)
    Reply
  • rawoysters
    "At Ubisoft, for a long time we wanted to push 60 fps," Guérin admitted. "I don't think it was a good idea because you don't gain that much from 60 fps and it doesn't look like the real thing" .
    Give me a break. You are catering to the console market, plain and simple. It's much easier to develop for and that's where the money is. They will try everything they can to spin this another way.
    Reply
  • vmem
    if they drop back to 30fps because they want to have more detailed textures and push for 4K as a standard, then I don't mind (too much)

    but this is obviously to save the Xbox One and PS4 from getting dumped to the roadside so yeah... curse you consoles!!! worse part is these consoles supposedly won't be refreshed for like 10 years
    Reply
  • usertests
    I'm sorry but 30 FPS is too much. All video games should be framerate locked at 24 FPS to provide a cinematic quality experience.
    Reply
  • anneoneamouse
    Game performance comments from a level design director and a creative director? I'll bet Enzo Ferrari never once asked his paint-maker how fast a car needed to go.

    AoN
    Reply
  • dwatterworth
    Someone better get over to AMD and Nvidia super quick and tell them to not waste any more money on GPU development...

    So games that 30 fps is acceptable on a supposed 'premium machine'; strategy, turn based games, solitaire.

    I take that back on solitaire, those cards and pixel fireworks shoot out faster than 30 fps and sure do look nice and smooth at high framerates.

    What a crock. Now that the new consoles are essentially PC's, shouldn't it be incredibly easy to develop the game to as high a quality as possible and then adjust the frame rates to match the hardware (in case of fixed hardware consoles).

    Saying 30 fps lets you get the most detail in as possible doesn't make sense. It clearly would allow for more detail and effects on lower power hardware but it's not like the texture files, light maps etc will change other than being refreshed/rerendered more often when the frame rate goes up.

    People don't want to game on a zoetrope.
    Reply
  • zanny
    because 4K displays are becoming more and more common

    4k is not even on developers radar. They are targeting toaster machines under a TV that cannot handle 2006 visuals at 1080/60. The reason for this propaganda barrage involving false claims about 30 fps being anything probably because MS and Sony are bribing them to. They built low end computers and sold them as next gen and wondered why in order to make graphics look even comparable to modern PC titles the devs had to ruin the framerates and resolutions.

    But 4k won't even be a thing next console gen in all likelihood. In the same way 1080p displays were out during the PS2 era, and then the 360 / PS3 were incapable of targeting that resolution, I expect the Xbox Zero and PS5 to be incapable of rendering to 4k as well, because even in four years it will be expensive to supply graphics hardware that will be able to handle it.
    Reply