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[Cipherr]

How can PC gamers go from 'getting it on the PC, it's the only place to play' to 'PC games get gimped because of consoles'

Which is it? Is it worth buying a gaming PC or not? Make your minds up.

Are they the same people? If so use names. Stop lobbing generalizations across vast amounts of people.

I've seen it in more places than Gaf today.

Then address them directly if you really want an answer. Im not sure why you are so hostile in this case anyway. People are getting screwed out of a better performing game. How in the hell this isn't something all gamers can unite on is seriously strange.

But, that's not what they do. He outright comes out and explicitly says that "yeah, we purposely limited one version to enforce parity", pretty much guaranteeing that the fallout will be greater than if he'd said nothing.

That he adds that the reasoning behind the move was to "avoid debates" is just icing on the idiocy-cake.

Yeah thats the part that gets me. Its a little strange how forthcoming they are about it. Im happy they are being honest so that we know though. I mean, wow.

 

[Beerman462]

See, the only thing you need to realize to resolve this dilemma is that even a gimped PC game is usually better than on consoles.

YES! YES! YES!

The Dark Souls 1 port is a key example.Even though it was a terrible port, it was still better than the console version is every measurable way. Your fix made it a next gen port for real.

 

[R_thanatos]

Do you demand parity?

why did i laugh at this ?

This thread ... keeps delivering..

 

[Codes4Food]

And now you're an expert in Xbox SDK?

There are specific API calls for allocating in esram. If you choose to worry about two pools is up to the dev. The complicated part is not using esram, it's figuring out what buffers to put there, that will fit.

 

[Arrogant Bastard]

Now I'm worried all worried about The Division.

right

 

[Chobel]

There are specific API calls for allocating in esram. If you choose to worry about two pools is up to the dev. The complicated part is not using esram, it's figuring out what buffers to put there, that will fit.

And you think that's easy?

 

[EGOMON]

I made sure that everyone from my friends not to buy this game because of this BS, man am so pissed right now i wish i had more influence in the gaming media

 

[simplythebest]

Do you demand parity?

Dr. King fought for this stuff!

 

[Anfang]

Now I'm worried all worried about The Division.

Would be nice if they implemented a 1080/720 choice like ff14 did

 

[EventHorizon]

How is this relevant? Did the producer say esram is the reason for forced parity?

It's relevant because they obviously had to do extra work to get the XB1 version to work, yet it was claimed that it was too much work to offload some of the CPU tasks to the GPU in a CPU bound game. The extra work needed to navigate the XB1's architecture is just another example of how the XB1 held back the PS4.

I could even understand that if the XB1 had a larger marketshare, since it would mean putting your money where it would get the best return on investment. However the PS4 has the larger marketshare so spending more on the XB1 version just to reach parity means they're not even making economic sense.

 

[Speedy Blue Dude]

Sad thing about all of this is that I thought today's Story trailer looked pretty good.

So... does the game being 900p in any way affect the method this game will use to story-tell, or change the actual quality of the games story itself?

I don't understand why you'd be so upset with the resolution that it actively makes you disinterested in a portion of the game where resolution makes no difference.

 

[Verendus]

First it delayed games, now it's forcing games to not be all that they can be. Playstation 4. It's the future. We wouldn't have this issue if Ubisoft didn't have the Delaystation dragging them down.

 

[Windom Earle]

Haha, this is something else. I hate AssCreed so I would not have bought it anyway. But after destroying any leftover trust with PC gamers we have now parity on consoles? LMAO, sad. And Ubis games run like shit even with strong CPUs, so this is a weird excuse. And then of course we have Black Flag that runs perfectly at 1080p on the PS4. All around shady and boycott worthy.

 

[Codes4Food]

And you think that's easy?

I wouldn't say it's hard but if there was 128mb things would be much easier. This is off topic now, perhaps we can discuss elsewhere?

 

[NullPointer]

Speaking with VideoGamer, senior producer Vincent Pontbriand revealed the figures, which come in below the 1080p/60fps figures that Ubisoft was reportedly targeting for both platforms. And while there is a technical reason for not being able to reach those numbers, Ubisoft decided to make the two console versions identical in the interest of parity. "We decided to lock them at the same specs to avoid all the debates and stuff," Pontbriand explained.

(link)

There was a time... when we thought we had much more power to work with... but that was a long, long ago -- wait, actually, not that long ago, come to think of it.

I know you must have endless questions. Until Ubisoft wakes and finds its talking points, I am the one who speaks for it.

I could tell you of the technical reasons we couldn't hit our targets, or of the internal debates we endured to decide how best to avoid external debates, but I won't, because stuff.

 

[StrongBlackVine]

First it delayed games, now it's forcing games to not be all that they can be.

Playstation 4.

It's the future.

You almost had me...

 

[atlantos]

At the end of the day, Ubi has co marketing deal with MS.. There's no way that Ubi can put out the better version on the competing platform and get away with it.. I would not uses the words that's being used in the quote to explain the situation however.. It is such a bad PR statement..

a bit off topic though.. is there a clear video that show the difference between 60fps vs 30fps? I can see the difference between 1080p and 900p but I can't see the difference between 60fps vs 30fps.. I was looking through youtube but people are saying that youtube capped at 30fps so there's no difference unless you slow it down.. I want to see the difference at real time so that I know what people are talking about..

 

[scoobs]

It feels like an overreaction even to me, but here I am cancelling my pre-order. I gotta draw the line somewhere... this is just a despicable practice by Ubi.

 

[Verendus]

You almost had me...

I'm sorry, but you managed to quote my post in its original form, before the console of the future forced me to amend it and bog it down with further needless words. I hope you'll understand.

 

[Codes4Food]

It's relevant because they obviously had to do extra work to get the XB1 version to work, yet it was claimed that it was too much work to offload some of the CPU tasks to the GPU in a CPU bound game. The extra work needed to navigate the XB1's architecture is just another example of how the XB1 held back the PS4.

I could even understand that if the XB1 had a larger marketshare, since it would mean putting your money where it would get the best return on investment. However the PS4 has the larger marketshare so spending more on the XB1 version just to reach parity means they're not even making economic sense.

I do agree with you. I'm sure they did plenty of market research. The question is really will making the games identical lose or gain overall revenue?

 

[Mineshaft_Gap]

I will continue to not buy Ubisoft games.

I can't wait to see how poorly this is optimized for PC.

 

[liquidtmd]

See, the only thing you need to realize to resolve this dilemma is that even a gimped PC game is usually better than on consoles.

What if hypothetically Ubi locked the PC version exactly to the consoles performance saying 'they wanted to avoid the debate'?

 

[Beerman462]

What if hypothetically Ubi locked the PC version exactly to the consoles performance saying 'they wanted to avoid the debate'?

Modders(Durante included) would fix it.

 

[DarthWalden]

At the end of the day, Ubi has co marketing deal with MS.. There's no way that Ubi can put out the better version on the competing platform and get away with it.. I would not uses the words that's being used in the quote to explain the situation however.. It is such a bad PR statement..

a bit off topic though.. is there a clear video that show the difference between 60fps vs 30fps? I can see the difference between 1080p and 900p but I can't see the difference between 60fps vs 30fps.. I was looking through youtube but people are saying that youtube capped at 30fps so there's no difference unless you slow it down.. I want to see the difference at real time so that I know what people are talking about..

How quickly people forget that cod :Ghosts was 1080/60 on PS4 to 720/60 on XB1 but I guess it's easy to forget that when it contradicts your narrative.,

 

[Two Words]

At the end of the day, Ubi has co marketing deal with MS.. There's no way that Ubi can put out the better version on the competing platform and get away with it.. I would not uses the words that's being used in the quote to explain the situation however.. It is such a bad PR statement..

a bit off topic though.. is there a clear video that show the difference between 60fps vs 30fps? I can see the difference between 1080p and 900p but I can't see the difference between 60fps vs 30fps.. I was looking through youtube but people are saying that youtube capped at 30fps so there's no difference unless you slow it down.. I want to see the difference at real time so that I know what people are talking about..

Call of Duty: Ghosts?

 

[Jhn]

a bit off topic though.. is there a clear video that show the difference between 60fps vs 30fps? I can see the difference between 1080p and 900p but I can't see the difference between 60fps vs 30fps.

I like this: http://30vs60fps.com/

Be aware that a lot of the comparisons you'll run into online will perform differently in different browsers. My work PC, which is a development powerhouse, fails to render most 60fps comparisons in firefox for whatever reason, but chrome is usually fine.

 

[miDnIghtEr20C]

You know that you should read the OP, right? Here's what's happening
"We decided to lock them at the same specs to avoid all the debates and stuff,"

Ha... so now this PR is to be believed. Dude said something stupid. Just like he did about how they couldn't do the female characters movements correctly.

I don't man. I saw another statement from Ubi after the one you just quoted. Said the other guy wasn't quoted right or something like that.

I know what you want to believe, just like you know what I want to. And I want to believe that Ubi is going to under deliver on another title. Just like they did with Watch Dogs compared to what people saw a year before it came out. Seems like Ubi always has problems like this with big games.

Or hell... maybe the guys actually making the game know a bit more than you and think it's better to have it at 900/30 on ps4 as well because of the 5000 npc's on screen at one time and all that other jazz. Would you rather have it at 1080p and running all weird?

I do know one thing though... I like that Banderas gif too.

We understand how Senior Producer Vincent Pontbriand's quotes have been misinterpreted. To set the record straight, we did not lower the specs for Assassin's Creed Unity to account for any one system over the other.

Assassin's Creed Unity has been engineered from the ground up for next-generation consoles. Over the past 4 years, we have created Assassin's Creed Unity to attain the tremendous level of quality we have now achieved on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. It's a process of building up toward our goals, not scaling down, and we're proud to say that we have reached those goals on all SKUs.

At no point did we decide to reduce the ambitions of any SKU. All benefited from the full dedication of all of our available optimization resources to help them reach the level of quality we have today with the core Assassin's Creed Unity experience.


Source: http://kotaku.com/ac-unity-will-have-sa ... 1643054770

 

[Interface23]

Whelp, now I'm waiting to pick this up when it's deeply discounted. Holding a version back just because leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[onanie]

Much easier said than done.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but I don't think eventhorizon was referring to GPGPU.

 

[maneil99]

AI doesn't do draw calls, the AI character do but if AI logic is heavy then the most logical solution is to lower framerate not resolution because the AI does not run on GPU. Of course if Ubi suddenly become expert at GPGPU then it is running on GPU and this whole thing is makes sense but this not the case because ubi says the game is CPU bound.

Increasing GPU load (900p > 1080p) still uses more CPU for draw calls, but like I said, not enough to be noticeable

 

[atlantos]

How quickly people forget that cod :Ghosts was 1080/60 on PS4 to 720/60 on XB1 but I guess it's easy to forget that when it contradicts your narrative.,

Ops.. I stand corrected lol.. Perhaps MS thought it was a loophole and change the co-marketing agreement? Just guessing here.. no harm intended..

 

[Two Words]

Ha... so now this PR is to be believed. Dude said something stupid. Just like he did about how they couldn't do the female characters movements correctly.

I don't man. I saw another statement from Ubi after the one you just quoted. Said the other guy wasn't quoted right or something like that.

I know what you want to believe, just like you know what I want to. And I want to believe that Ubi is going to under deliver on another title. Just like they did with Watch Dogs compared to what people saw a year before it came out. Seems like Ubi always has problems like this with big games.

Or hell... maybe the guys actually making the game know a bit more than you and think it's better to have it at 900/30 on ps4 as well because of the 5000 npc's on screen at one time and all that other jazz. Would you rather have it at 1080p and running all weird?

I do know one thing though... I like that Banderas gif too.

So what part of the original statement was "misinterpreted"?

 

[EventHorizon]

I do agree with you. I'm sure they did plenty of market research. The question is really will making the games identical lose or gain overall revenue?

Oh I have no doubt that Ubi made this decision based on money. After all they have a marketing deal with Microsoft. That's what everyone is upset about.

I'm pointing out the lack of economic sense of what they've done to highlight the magnitude of the incentive Microsoft must have given them for them to consider it a net positive to do it anyway.

 

[orochi91]

It feels like an overreaction even to me, but here I am cancelling my pre-order. I gotta draw the line somewhere... this is just a despicable practice by Ubi.

You're correct with that line of thinking. Do not reward these guys with day one purchases.

 

[Jhn]

Increasing GPU load (900p > 1080p) still uses more CPU for draw calls, but like I said, not enough to be noticeable

Are you sure about that? As far as I know, increasing resolution does not increase the amount of draw calls, assuming the frustum remains the same.

 

[OsirisBlack]

This is the first pre-order I have cancelled for a game I was actually pretty interested in. I will not support this policy this should be quite embarrassing for Ubisoft. This does make me wonder if The Witcher,Evolve and the Division will follow this trend.

 

[Jrs3000]

Ops.. I stand corrected lol.. Perhaps MS thought it was a loophole and change the co-marketing agreement? Just guessing here.. no harm intended..

Joke?

 

[Codes4Food]

Oh I have no doubt that Ubi made this decision based on money. After all they have a marketing deal with Microsoft. That's what everyone is upset about.

I'm pointing out the lack of economic sense of what they've done to highlight the magnitude of the incentive Microsoft must have given them for them to consider it a net positive to do it anyway.

Marketing is expensive. I would assume the money saved/gained is more than any lost sales.

Claiming Microsoft is paying for parity is quite far fetched though imo

 

[Interface23]

This is the first pre-order I have cancelled for a game I was actually pretty interested in. I will not support this policy this should be quite embarrassing for Ubisoft. This does make me wonder if The Witcher,Evolve and the Division will follow this trend.

Witcher absolutely will not. CDProjekt has stated many times they won't downgrade anything. Division will because lolUbisoft.

 

[Eusis]

a bit off topic though.. is there a clear video that show the difference between 60fps vs 30fps? I can see the difference between 1080p and 900p but I can't see the difference between 60fps vs 30fps.. I was looking through youtube but people are saying that youtube capped at 30fps so there's no difference unless you slow it down.. I want to see the difference at real time so that I know what people are talking about..

Check out some .webm videos, there's some threads for them here and OTs for games like Trials Fusion have them.

How quickly people forget that cod :Ghosts was 1080/60 on PS4 to 720/60 on XB1 but I guess it's easy to forget that when it contradicts your narrative.,

It's possible things changed, but I can see it just as likely (maybe MORE likely?) that Ubisoft is genuinely that stupid and afraid of alienating any consumers so they try to make the games look as even as possible, there was similar talk for The Crew but I don't think it was as bad because at least it was 1080p, and most other games with full on parity were either 1080p and/or 60fps (usually the former or both) on both platforms. This time it's 900p/30fps so it definitely comes off as suspicious rather than a game targeting 1080p for the XB1 so that it had no further room to go (meaningfully anyway) on the PS4.

Incidentally, if there isn't a serious CPU bottleneck that hits the resolution and it IS Ubisoft being dumb rather than taking a deal that is EXACTLY why we need to make noise, because if their goal is minimum alienation then they need to know that arbitrarily holding the PS4 version back in the name of parity is pissing off more people than the XB1 doing the best it can and getting fanboys/people with one console irritated every time it's highlighted again.

 

[pixellated_man]

It's off topic, but yes I'm serious, and I stand by it.

The PS4s appeal to the mainstream was down to price, not power.

Off topic though as I've said.

Then why is it still outselling the XOne at the same (and more often more expensive) price?

 

[kaching]

I don't understand why you'd be so upset with the resolution that it actively makes you disinterested in a portion of the game where resolution makes no difference.

Not that the guy sounded particularly "upset" in his post, but certainly disappointed. Because the choice made regarding resolution points to an overall approach to design that may lead to other disappointments.

 

[Edi]

Preorder cancelled until i see the game or wait for a sale, complete edition...

 

[scoobs]

Well now I'm terrified for Far Cry 4 ... they're gonna screw us over again aren't they guys?

 

[Dreez]

How quickly people forget that cod :Ghosts was 1080/60 on PS4 to 720/60 on XB1 but I guess it's easy to forget that when it contradicts your narrative.,

To play devil's advocate, that was early in the gen. Microsoft could have wisen up since then and just started to include bonuses/stipulations for their marketing agreements.

In my personal opinion tho, Ubisoft devs might not just give a fuck & are trying to finish up the game.

 

[onanie]

Ha... so now this PR is to be believed. Dude said something stupid. Just like he did about how they couldn't do the female characters movements correctly.

I don't man. I saw another statement from Ubi after the one you just quoted. Said the other guy wasn't quoted right or something like that.

I know what you want to believe, just like you know what I want to. And I want to believe that Ubi is going to under deliver on another title. Just like they did with Watch Dogs compared to what people saw a year before it came out. Seems like Ubi always has problems like this with big games.

Or hell... maybe the guys actually making the game know a bit more than you and think it's better to have it at 900/30 on ps4 as well because of the 5000 npc's on screen at one time and all that other jazz. Would you rather have it at 1080p and running all weird?

I do know one thing though... I like that Banderas gif too.

I don't think it is possible to misinterpret "We decided to lock them at the same specs to avoid all the debates and stuff".

 

[Chobel]

Ha... so now this PR is to be believed. Dude said something stupid. Just like he did about how they couldn't do the female characters movements correctly.

I don't man. I saw another statement from Ubi after the one you just quoted. Said the other guy wasn't quoted right or something like that.

I know what you want to believe, just like you know what I want to. And I want to believe that Ubi is going to under deliver on another title. Just like they did with Watch Dogs compared to what people saw a year before it came out. Seems like Ubi always has problems like this with big games.

Or hell... maybe the guys actually making the game know a bit more than you and think it's better to have it at 900/30 on ps4 as well because of the 5000 npc's on screen at one time and all that other jazz. Would you rather have it at 1080p and running all weird?

I do know one thing though... I like that Banderas gif too.

He's not PR, he's Senior Producer so he knows his stuff, meaning he's to be believed. Now the second quote is PR, so it shouldn't be taken at face value, and it even didn't explain why the producer was misinterpreted, it was just a bunch of fancy words.

And stop making this 900p vs 1080p, people don't want 1080p, they want PS4 power to be be fully utilized.

 

[psn]

At the end of the day, Ubi has co marketing deal with MS.. There's no way that Ubi can put out the better version on the competing platform and get away with it.. I would not uses the words that's being used in the quote to explain the situation however.. It is such a bad PR statement..

a bit off topic though.. is there a clear video that show the difference between 60fps vs 30fps? I can see the difference between 1080p and 900p but I can't see the difference between 60fps vs 30fps.. I was looking through youtube but people are saying that youtube capped at 30fps so there's no difference unless you slow it down.. I want to see the difference at real time so that I know what people are talking about..

http://www.testufo.com/#test=framerates&count=3&background=stars&pps=960

 

[Touch fuzZy. get BizZay]

Just skimming and saw this! Sooooooo good.

Even though I'm very fatigued by what samey collect'em ups the annual AC games turn out to be, I was thinking about maybe getting unity since it has co-op and PS4 lacks games, but I wasn't really that interested. Then ubisoft make skipping it even easier by going for parity...its nice to have a decision thats so simple to make!

 

[pixellated_man]

My theory is that the marketing deal includes an agreement about sales performance relative to a competing platform. This way, they did not have to directly stipulate what to gimp on the competition.

I mean, how more idiotic could microsoft look if they paid money for a marketing deal, and still sold less (which would likely happen)?



I can tell this has been a difficult generation for him.

Great post. There are a number of ways that companies can make shady deals without it being blatantly obvious.