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[watership]

what do you think the reason is for them downgrading the PS4 version? again, decisions like this aren't made for no reason.

the reason they put forward is to "stop discussion", but anyone could tell them it'd have the opposite effect. it's obviously not the reason.

so I'm curious what you think the reason is?

I have no clue. I just think that the practice of "secret deals to kill the performance of one version vs another isn't going on here. There could be technical reasons, like framerate or other performance factors. Was the PS4 confirmed to be running fine at 1080p30? To be honest i haven't followed this game closely. UBIsoft has had pr english problems before. "Link to heart" rings a bell. Perhaps this was just a poorly thought out ..just the worst pr choice this gen.

Games can look and perform really well on both consoles, how they produce a game and what they chose to optimize depends on the time/money/resources of a developer. Even if the PS4 has more GPU power, you may not get your (insert raw performance gap numbers) difference.

 

[maquiladora]

This is incredible.

 

[3rdamention]

I didn't know Destiny had a similar parity issue. Why wasn't Destiny pushed more on PS4? I guess since it was 1080p, everyone just brushed off anymore hardware utilization. If Unity was 1080p on both, this issue would not have surfaced. I am still concerned that the PS4 won't be pushed as often in 3rd party games to ensure parity with MS hardware limitations.

The parity in Destiny was a huge thread here on NeoGaf when they announced both would run the same resolution....it was discussed a lot and I'm surprised you missed the thread...

 

[hohoXD123]

Not sure how you're meant to improve on perfection but worth a try.

 

[Kamina]

Oh god, I haven't see such awesome work in a long time. Bravo my friend, bravo!

@thread: Originally I was very excited about AC Unity, but I will not support this idiocy until PS4 gets a patch.

 

[Stump0]

uggh ubisoft what happened to gpu compute?

 

[ChoklitCow]

LOL, but seriously. The framerate is struggling in the build that we are hearing about and seeing in previews today. The game still looks rather nice, but hopefully they can iron that out for those playing it on Xbox One. They damn sure should be able to on PS4... I hope.

Part of me thinks this comment was just a scapegoat so that it was easier to fix the problems before its very near release. Even though you are looking at different memory allocation, I'd assume stripping things down for both teams during crunch would help? Could be off-base.

But then, I can't see how this comment was remotely intelligent from a PR standpoint regardless of it's true intention. The old saying that "no publicity is bad publicity"? I just hope tomorrow when they attempt to cover this up they say they are making these concessions to add playable female characters. The interwebs would erupt.

 

[OléGunner]

"Sir, the peasants don't want debate."
"Then let them have Parity."

Seriously Ubi wtf though seriously?! Literally holding back gaming tech. This will be the first AC I don't purchase at the launch window.

 

[Vizzeh]

What the absolute shit is this from Ubisoft, is this a joke:

UBISOFT: ASSASSIN'S CREED UNITY COULD NOT RUN ON WII U

"It wouldn't be possible."

"It wouldn't be possible, in our minds we’d be cheating fans by providing a lesser version of the same game".

But It is OKAY to cheat PS4 Owners to a lesser version of the game??

(http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/10/06/ubisoft-assassins-creed-unity-could-not-run-on-wii-u)

 

[reptilescorpio]

PR for this game has been terrible, someone really needs to coach these people what to say to avoid these shit storms.

 

[GreyOcelot]

I wouldn't be surprised with 1080p patch for the PS4 after the release. They've done it with AC4 and Activision has done it with COD: Ghost. As long as the deal between Ubisoft and MS is the "launch resolution", PS4 owners have nothing to worry about.

this makes no sense within the context of the statement made though. if a patch like that is released, in all likelihood at this point it's due to the backlash.

they blatantly said they are keeping both versions at 900p on purpose

 

[mave198]

So they purposely gimp the PS4 version to avoid the usual internet debating...........


Sure.....

 

[Patroclos]

You would be so popular in Salem a few centuries ago. They also loved to do things without any proof.

MS has done PLENTY of things which they could be "burned at the stake" for. They are not some poor herbalist who lives in the forest who is wrongly accused of being a witch. They are the warlock in the tower who tried to cast an appalling spell on the whole village of Videogaming (DRM).

Microsoft is the Ric Flair of gaming, every time they get hurt they beg for pity, then as soon as you turn your back, BOOM. Flying Hammerlock, they stoop even lower and get even shadier. Lessons are never learned by MS, every time you turn your back to them, watch yo ass.

 

[Bgamer90]

I wouldn't be surprised with 1080p patch for the PS4 after the release. They've done it with AC4 and Activision has done it with COD: Ghost. As long as the deal between Ubisoft and MS is the "launch resolution", PS4 owners have nothing to worry about.

The thing with this though is that the game isn't cross gen. Based on Ubisoft's horrible statement, I could see them using that fact as an excuse as to why they can't do a 1080p patch similar to those games you've mentioned.

They shouldn't have said anything at all involving parity to be honest. Many would have assumed that the PS4 version would have better visual effects and/or a more stable frame rate even at the same resolution. Just really stupid.

 

[ALLseeingEYE]

So let me get this straight...

Ubi deliberately gimped the PS4 version of the game because MS gave them a giant bag of money... AND the French people in this game set in Paris, France during the French Revolution don't even parlez-vous Français with genuine French accents (or even passable fake ones)... AND the only way to play the game is via forced co-op... AND I can't even play as a chick?

I may have missed this, but where did we find out that MS sent them money? That seems pretty-style tinfoil hat to me.

From what I've seen, it's not MS that would be paying off Ubisoft, it's gamers. If you look at sales trends, games sell better when gamers think they're getting the optimal version for a game. I think this is exactly why Ubi gimped the PC port of Watch Dogs, why EA has parity on almost every game they release, and why Destiny had parity.

 

[Flintty]

Both ways are wrong, Bungie not taking advantage of the better hardware and balance things so everyone get the same experience is as bad.

Oh come on, that's totally different. Bungie achieved their vision on both consoles, just like Blizzard did with Diablo 3. No forced parity there.

 

[Jobbs]

I have no clue. I just think that the practice of "secret deals to kill the performance of one version vs another isn't going on here. There could be technical reasons, like framerate or other performance factors. Was the PS4 confirmed to be running fine at 1080p30? To be honest i haven't followed this game closely. UBIsoft has had pr english problems before. "Link to heart" rings a bell. Perhaps this was just a poorly thought out ..just the worst pr choice this gen.

Games can look and perform really well on both consoles, how they produce a game and what they chose to optimize depends on the time/money/resources of a developer. Even if the PS4 has more GPU power, you may not get your (insert raw performance gap numbers) difference.

honestly, I don't particularly care if a game is 900p -- Ryse was 900p and I don't think it looked blurry at all.

I just don't like bullshit. Deciding to reduce the performance of one version of the game for the sake of parity -- whether the reason is to stop discussion or to appease MS as part of some marketing arrangement you have with them -- either way, it's bullshit, and fuck 'em. Anyone who has a PS4 or who is fair minded should be offended by this -- that your version is being reduced for no good reason.

 

[spwolf]

this is pretty crappy move.

 

[AgentP]

Oh come on, that's totally different. Bungie achieved their vision on both consoles, just like Blizzard did with Diablo 3. No forced parity there.

Vision is code for lowest common denominator, which is parity.

 

[Red Comet]

That's really disappointing. I was considering picking this up on console so that I could play it on my new TV, but now I'm gravitating back toward PC. Then again, it is an Ubisoft game, so who knows how it is going to perform on PC? I'm conflicted.

I also find it funny how Ubisoft supposedly did this to avoid debate, but they've ended up generating more controversy then there ever would have been otherwise. They should have just made up some BS excuse that the PS4 couldn't handle 1080p for this game.

 

[DOWN]

They aren't new to this ?
Come on, this has to be a rough translation.
It HAS to be "we bumped up the xbone to match ps4" NOT "we knocked down PS4 to match X1 lol!".
They can't be that stupid.

And what happened here is rather clear in my head. X1 version was probably 720/792, Ubiguys were approached by MS and kindly asked to "make it the same as the PS4, i don't care how" (nope, not by lowering PS4's res, what dev would agree to this ?).
That i can see happening and in fact it has happened with Diablo and Destiny.

They magically got the weaker one to reach parity with PS4 when other devs including themselves said they can't before, rather than doing what OP quotes them as saying, which is that they set a goal of parity at all costs to avoid debate and obviously that means the weaker one has to set the standard for the higher one?

 

[Neuromancer]

I dont believe MS gave them money. I do believe Ubisoft is just selling us bullshit and a lot us will just buy that bullshit.

On the contrary I think this is a surprising amount of honesty from them. They could have just said, 'Our guys are working really hard to get the best out of both machines' instead of 'We decided to lock them at the same specs to avoid all the debates and stuff.' Those debates only hurt the image of one company's system.

 

[sector4]

It's already been confirmed to run at 1080p/30fps on PS4.

Far Cry 4 has a marketing deal with Sony so maybe it's safe from parity *tin foil hat*

 

[mdubs]

The more controversy this generates, the more I want to buy this game because of the moral outrage. Strange.

 

[Falk]

Listen, everyone on this boards knows you and your stance on all things Xbox, we expect no less.

The heck? No one asked me.

Give me 2 minutes and after some research I will be able to tell you that I too know about him and his stance on all things xbox, and expect no less.

edit: Okay I can now tell you that I too know about him and his stance on all things xbox, and expect no less

 

[ramoisdead]

Not sure how you're meant to improve on perfection but worth a try.

The gift that keeps on giving.

 

[BananasWithGuns]

I know I shouldn't be surprised at this point but it's still crazy to me how much people lose their shit over stuff like this. It seems like such a ridiculously minor thing to go crazy over.

I mean, I can understand being a little irritated by it (assuming the PS4 version is capable of 1080p anyway) but to start going on a crusade of twitter hashtags and preorder cancellations just seems so insanely over the top that it's not even funny anymore.

I'm not in the business of telling people how they should react or feel but damn...I think a lot of you might be overreacting a bit over this. It's just resolution.

 

[ioriyagami]

Then again most of the people loling etc. don't really understand the thread and think it is about the resolution not the admittance of forced parity for literally no reason.

I don't think "literally" means what you think it means. Your assumptions don't make stuff "literal".

To me, this sounds like the trend AAA developers releasing multi-platform titles are going to take. If they develop for one common target framebuffer and one common set of features, decided by the weakest target platform (i.e., Xbox One), they are saving a lot of development costs and hitting milestones easier. That sounds like a reason to me, even if it still sucks. If I were you guys, I'd be prepared for more multi-platform titles to go down this route, time will tell...

Good news is, you can still blame Microsoft if you want.

 

[Fnord]

why are people shouting downgrade when they never once said that Unity will be 1080p on ps4 or 60 fps. "Targeting"=/="will be"

Because there would have been no reason to have made the comments the guy made were there not a downgrade on the PS4 side.

 

[Toki767]

Far Cry 4 has a marketing deal with Sony so maybe it's safe from parity *tin foil hat*

Yeah. As was Watch Dogs which was 792p on Xbox One and 900p on PS4. My hype for The Division is starting to go down at this rate though.

 

[watership]

Listen, everyone on this boards knows you and your stance on all things Xbox, we expect no less. But I honestly find it hard to believe people cannot understand why a developer admitting this straight up in public that they CHOSE to keep parity isn't a huge blunder that everyone should be behind.

Then again most of the people loling etc. don't really understand the thread and think it is about the resolution not the admittance of forced parity for literally no reason.

I have a stance on a lot of things, not just xbox . I'm not picking sides at all, I'm just thinking of how things are done and decided. If this dev is saying this to "shadow-admit" that this is forced parity, then there are multiple nightmares going on in every single developer/platform holders offices right now.

 

[p3tran]

Instead of making up reasons, we have Ubisoft saying they did it to stop people arguing about it. This isn't a technical discussion, this is a political decision made for a videogame. Thats the precedent that has literally just been set with this admission. We will never know what exactly was said, but its sure that Ubisoft decided to keep resolutions the same due to negative reception/debate that occurs when the Xbone title can't hit the resolution. PS4 owners don't get upset or debate when a game ships 1080p. So what are they trying to silence with this parity, so people won't argue..?

Will the PC release also be locked to 900p..? Or are they saying that superior hardware has no bearing on their resolution developments.

i think the article is more about framerate, they say in the same article that if cpu's were not the obstacle, and it was graphics alone they could do high framerates.

about resolution, instead of jumping to conclusions, I say again that I look on their very last game. it was 900/30 on ps4, even lower on xbone. and sony had the marketing deal on that one.
and this one is more demanding.

 

[Majima Everywhere System]

Ubisoft will understand my purchasing parity on both platforms, I hope.

 

[DOWN]

I didn't know Destiny had a similar parity issue. Why wasn't Destiny pushed more on PS4? I guess since it was 1080p, everyone just brushed off anymore hardware utilization. If Unity was 1080p on both, this issue would not have surfaced. I am still concerned that the PS4 won't be pushed as often in 3rd party games to ensure parity with MS hardware limitations.

It didn't have a similar parity issue. It was known that it would be 1080p on PS4 and they didn't think it could be on XB1. Then they got a little wiggle from the SDK update and they used it for resolution. The PS4 version still came out looking better, and thus no controversy. It was simply a gain for XB1 that we expected.

This is Ubisoft literally saying we held back one to match the lower standard of the other so that there would be no ego pains for the people backing the weaker system.

 

[Methamatics101]

Not sure how you're meant to improve on perfection but worth a try.

:lol Perfect!

 

[Flintty]

Vision is code for lowest common denominator, which is parity.

Can't tell if serious...

Destiny was underachieving of Bungie's vision until MS got involved.

 

[BigDug13]

Sony made their console with a resolution target of 1080p because those are the TV's they sell and what the majority of HDTV's sold today are. To have developers actively disregard native resolutions that Sony designed their console to perform is a pretty big slap in the face of the entire PS4 design team.

And a slap in the face of gamers who expect 1080p this gen.

 

[Patroclos]

loving the meltdowns and calls for boycotts.
i'm still preordering on ps4. this and gtav will give me the 15 usd from the offer.
come at me.

Why? You are obviously a lost cause without much foresight about the industry. Write you off? Yes. Come at you? Why bother. Enjoy your game.

 

[Gunmonkey36]

why are people shouting downgrade when they never once said that Unity will be 1080p on ps4 or 60 fps. "Targeting"=/="will be"

"We decided to lock them at the same specs to avoid all the debates and stuff," senior producer Vincent Pontbriand

 

[Jacob4815]

Those Ubisoft assholes need to announce the PS4 1080p patch today, and stop this shitstorm.

When was the Black Flag patch announced?

 

[Ethelwulf]

who has to benefit from the parity?

I know who. I just think we should not jump to conclusions like this. "MS might've paid", yes. "Definitely paid", not sure.

 

[trixx]

72 pages I swear this was bigger that Zelda e3 reveal lol.

 

[Hugstable]

what do you think the reason is for them downgrading the PS4 version? again, decisions like this aren't made for no reason.

the reason they put forward is to "stop discussion", but anyone could tell them it'd have the opposite effect. it's obviously not the reason.

so I'm curious what you think the reason is?

I think the reason is the engine they created is crap and they are trying to rush the game out to be Holiday 2014, and they really didn't know how to put it and don't want to come out and say "hey our engine runs like shit so we have to tone stuff down". Seeing as how Microsoft got marketing money in this they probably sent their engineers to work on the game, thus bringing it up to 900p just like 1080p Destiny.

 

[Live Free or Die]

Awesome. Lol Couldn't be anymore truer.

 

[Quadraphonic]

but if thats the case, and ms is paying for parity, why them are sooooo stupid and they pay just for parity and not pay for superiority?

Could you imagine how much more of a shitstorm it'd be if it ran better than the PS4? Pitchforks would be out. This, this is debatable about Microsoft's intervention. Plausible deniability. But the XB1 doing better? No, that is 100% paid off.

 

[Xun]

What a load of fucking bullshit.

I knew this would happen this generation.

 

[MaLDo]

what do you think the reason is for them downgrading the PS4 version? again, decisions like this aren't made for no reason.

the reason they put forward is to "stop discussion", but anyone could tell them it'd have the opposite effect. it's obviously not the reason.

so I'm curious what you think the reason is?

My bet

As watch dogs, ACU target 900p30 for ps4 and 720p30 for xbox.

Microsoft could have paid more dev time to ubi to improve xbox version. More money always means better performance. Devs have to set a goal in order to reach a date, but what is good enough for them can always be better with external funding.

Maybe they can release a post launch patch for 1080p in ps4 using the tricks they found in these extran man work days. Using it in release date could not be fair.

 

[FloweryMarston]

You are missing the point. It's not solely about "dem p's" it's about gimping a product that could be better. This didn't happen last gen (as far as we know), why should it happen in this one?
They deliberately said themselves they didn't want to improve the PS4 version because of some bs excuse. If you have the resources, the money and the hardware available (which Ubisoft definitely has) you should be able to use that extra power and make each respective version as good as possible.

But whatever, LOL GAMERS #GamerGate


And we got another one missing the point ladies and gents. Thanks for playing!!

Sorry if what i said offended you. Again, this whole thing is more of a poorly worded PR of ubisoft, which they are already known for. By the description of the Press release, you can take make two conclusions out of this:

- the PS4 version was downgraded because of parity
- the Xbone version was upgraded because of parity

he explained that because of the things that they are doing with the game tech wise, they were unable to improve the game's performance past 30 fps. So i don't think that the game was 1080p/60fps all the time on ps4 and suddenly, they gimped the game because of it to hit the xbone spec. Now, the other way around, where 30fps/900p for ps4 was the best they could get, and they were getting 792p/30fps on xbone, and then they improved on that and decided to stop there (i.e if they could've improved only the ps4 edition to 1080p, they didn't for this parity reason), it's much more easy for me to believe. the ubisoft guy said that they managed to get 1080p30fps with far cry 4, and let's hope for the xbone is the same, but if isn't, they won't downgrade to 900p the ps4 version for parity.

And well, in the end this doesn't really matter for me and i don't think that you guys should be losing your minds over a poorly worded PR. If you don't want to support ubisoft that's perfectly okay too. But i'm not missing the point, i just don't think this is worth having so much drama over it.

In the past we didn't have parity, we had clearly inferior versions, with things sometimes not even fully functioning after countless patches because developers gave priority to one version and gave the other version to a less prepared developer.

And about the gamergate joke, i don't think "LOL GAMERS", but it's pretty funny to see gaf having 70+ pages over this.

 

[Neuromancer]

The more controversy this generates, the more I want to buy this game because of the moral outrage. Strange.

Looking at your post history, it's not strange at all. In fact MS's tactic (assuming they're behind this) is working if its making you feel better about your purchase.

 

[Phlebas]

Not sure how you're meant to improve on perfection but worth a try.

Bravo