Phil Spencer: Starfield being 30fps is a "creative choice", not a hardware issue.

Bernardougf said:
I think 8k 15 fps would be objectively the better experience.. in fact 16k and slides would be the better one ... because I alone of course can define what its objectively better ...
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This nonsense again.

Yea you guys just keep consistently miss the point. No surprises here.

30fps on consoles is the sweet spot for devs because it allows them to deliver the most well rounded experience.

You get sharper resolution, better graphics, more NPC's on screen, and just LESS COMPROMISES overall in your game design and philosophy. There is a reason so many single player games run at 30fps on consoles. Because there are far less compromises. End of story.

To the devs, that made sense. Now y'all can buy a PC, wait for a MidGenRefresh MidGenRefresh or keep crying about it.

But stop forcing these devs to cut back on everything else in their game just to hit a number.

It's stupid.
 
Elder Legend said:
Yeah, I am not so sure what the fuck was that statement. Why can't they just offer 4K30 on Series X with 1080/60 as another option??? Why is the Series X locked to 4K/30 makes 0 sense to me.

And wtf does a "creative" even mean? Honestly, he really shouldn't have used the word "creative" that just makes it sound way worse.
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Jesus Christ. It's a creative choice because enabling 60FPS would impact their creative vision. They would have to scale down on procedural generation. Or limit the player's budget when it comes to settlement building. Or reduce NPC count and AI complexity. You name it.

I'm happy that they stuck to their guns, the game will be better for it for ever and ever.

At the same time, of course the hardware is the limiting factor but just a general rule. You have a finite amount of resources, no shit there's a limit.
 
adamsapple said:
We love twisting words. He's talking about other games that run at 4K/60 on console as not a hardware issue, clearly we can all read that. But we choose to misconstrue it.


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Pure mental gymnastics on your part, mate. It clearly is a platform issue if the creative scale you choose causes the platform to chug.

I mean shit, there were 60fps games on every platform ever. Even last gen Jaguar cores.

Keep sipping that Kool Aid tho.
 
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MidGenRefresh said:
Jesus Christ. It's a creative choice because enabling 60FPS would impact their creative vision. They would have to scale down on procedural generation. Or limit the player's budget when it comes to settlement building. Or reduce NPC count and AI complexity. You name it.

I'm happy that they stuck to their guns, the game will be better for it for ever and ever.

At the same time, of course the hardware is the limiting factor but just a general rule. You have a finite amount of resources, no shit there's a limit.
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I get what you are saying and I agree for the most part. But I just think using the word "creative" was the wrong way to go about it. It paints the console bad and that 4K60 or just 60 fps in general cannot be done.

I think saying something like "due to the core design philosophy of this title the 30 FPS allows us to do X, Y and Z. Therefore, we didnt want to sacrifice core game features and capabilities just to hit a certain fps number"
 
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Creative choice in that he wants the Series X version to be upscaled 4K. That's not going to happen at 60fps on any console.
 
DeepEnigma said:
Pure mental gymnastics on your part, mate. It clearly is a platform issue if the creative scale you choose causes the platform to chug.

Keep sipping that Kool Aid tho.
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Yes, that is true for Starfield the game. But in that statement Phil is very clearly talking saying that there are other games that run at 4K/60 so it's not a console hardware level issue in supporting that.


"It's a creative choice. We obviously have games that are running at 4K/60 on the platform. It's not a platform issue, it's a creative decision.


Take a sip of my kool-aid. We all need it since this topic's eviscerated the actual statement to smithereens by now.
 
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People are either just trolling or have some communication issues on this one. LOL

He definitely is not saying that a higher fps would be a negative thing here, just that the team made the creative decision not to make the cuts necessary to hit 60 on the console.

Also, it doesn't matter what other engines or developers are doing, Bethesda makes CPU heavy games. Their engine and tools result in CPU heavy games that are typically 30fps on console. They have the success they have because of what they bring to the table, they aren't going to drop their identity and undercut their software to become a carbon copy of another developer.
 
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Elder Legend said:
Yeah, I am not so sure what the fuck was that statement. Why can't they just offer 4K30 on Series X with 1080/60 as another option??? Why is the Series X locked to 4K/30 makes 0 sense to me.

And wtf does a "creative" even mean? Honestly, he really shouldn't have used the word "creative" that just makes it sound way worse.
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He means they weren't willing to sacrifice other things they would have needed to sacrifice in order to get it to 60 on Xbox. That's fine and I could call that a creative decision.

But, to say it has nothing to do with console limitations is a lie. If they could have the game, as it is now, and run at a smooth 60 on Xbox, they would.
 
The comment about 4K30 being more consistent is perfectly reasonable. Anyone familiar with framerates knows that locking at a set FPS will provide a much better experience than letting the framerate wildly fluctuate. VRR does a lot to alleviate fluctuations, yes, but a) not everyone has a VRR capable display and b) it's not a silver bullet. Even with VRR, swinging between 33.33ms and 16.67ms is still going to feel like ass no matter how smooth the graduation between the two is. It's only really suited to small deviations below a target, like a brief drop from 60fps to 55fps.

It's also wildly entertaining to see how many armchair developers come crawling out the woodwork. Have all of you guys seen some of the game's resource profiling that I haven't? Do you all know how much the game is calculating under the hood to say what the framerate should be? Anyone intimately aware of how much the game is stressing the CPU? Are there bottlenecks? I guess it all doesn't matter anyway - because DAT DER HORIZON RUNS AT 60FPS AND LOOKS BETTERER SO WHY CANT DIS?

Pure retardation.
 
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Captain Toad said:
That was the point. It's called sarcasm and he was using it to point out the BS in Phil's comments that the game runs at 30 because of creative decisions and not limitations of the hardware.
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Ok. Let me say this: We completely agree that hardware limitations is a big part of it, always been.

But in my mind (I already see you have commented on this, so now I'm convinced we're completely on the same level) we also have take into consideration genre, scope, industry standards, expectations, the 4K craze, fps, RT.. It's all a part of "creative decisions", and these things aren't static either. Just think about what's happened with ray tracing and gi alone in just a short time. People seem to expect all of it to happen at once now, full RT toolset in 4K60fps in an full fledged RPG.. But it's a huge transition, especially on AMD hardwar. But that's what developers have to take into consideration when calculating what the best balance of finite resources is.

I'm so happy I have a high end PC with Nvidia hardware right now.. I can have my cake and eat it too..
 
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Thank you captain obvious (Phil).

Any game can run 60fps if you downgrade other aspects, it's always a give and take depending on what the devs want to prioritize.
 
DeepEnigma said:
Oh how selective, how selective indeed.

Phil said it was not a hardware issue tho!
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John's right though. The game is likely very CPU bound. You can't just cut resolution or "graphics settings" if the thing eating resources are the underlying systems and technical infrastructure of the game.

I don't think this is like Redfall where the game was meant to be 60fps and pushed out unoptimized. This game, as best anyone knows, was built with a 30fps target in mind. Last year we saw it really struggling to even hot 30. This year we see they have it a lot more stable and consistent, and that's a year of optimization at work. But I think anyone who expected it to get all the way to 60 was fooling themselves.

I get that it sucks for people who are sensitive to low framerates. This is why I will be playing on PC. But most people don't give a shit. My wife will be playing on Series S and not even know the difference.

The other day I had some Windows 11 bug that was causing horrible stuttering and my stepdaughter was playing a game and I couldn't even look at it, and I was asking her to stop so I could fix the issue and she was like "I can't see any stuttering, I don't know what you're talking about." Like most people are just not that sensitive to this.
 
A 60fps mode on a CPU-bound game would mean reductions in gameplay-related systems like the number of active AI. It's the reason why many last-gen games didn't have a 60fps when running on the Pro consoles.
 
And noone will care after playing for 5 minutes.

I feel bad for anyone who can't play anything at 30fps. Even after getting used to most games being 60 now, its easy to go back an forth.
 
Seems like quite the few of you ever have experienced the hell of 30fps on an OLED tv. It's nowhere near how 30fps operates on a "traditional" LCD, where it can feel somewhat smooth if it doesn't dip.
 
SF Kosmo said:
John's right though. The game is likely very CPU bound. You can't just cut resolution or "graphics settings" if the thing eating resources are the underlying systems and technical infrastructure of the game.

I don't think this is like Redfall where the game was meant to be 60fps and pushed out unoptimized. This game, as best anyone knows, was built with a 30fps target in mind. Last year we saw it really struggling to even hot 30. This year we see they have it a lot more stable and consistent, and that's a year of optimization at work. But I think anyone who expected it to get all the way to 60 was fooling themselves.

I get that it sucks for people who are sensitive to low framerates. This is why I will be playing on PC. But most people don't give a shit. My wife will be playing on Series S and not even know the difference.

The other day I had some Windows 11 bug that was causing horrible stuttering and my stepdaughter was playing a game and I couldn't even look at it, and I was asking her to stop so I could fix the issue and she was like "I can't see any stuttering, I don't know what you're talking about." Like most people are just not that sensitive to this.
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I didn't say he was wrong. It is how the PR is presented by MS.
 
adamsapple said:
Yes, that is true for Starfield the game. But in that statement Phil is very clearly talking saying that there are other games that run at 4K/60 so it's not a console hardware level issue in supporting that.


"It's a creative choice. We obviously have games that are running at 4K/60 on the platform. It's not a platform issue, it's a creative decision.


Take a sip of my kool-aid. We all need it since this topic's eviscerated the actual statement to smithereens by now.
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Wtf?
 
He's an employee of XBOX so I understand why he has to say that even though anyone who is following games coverage enough to read it knows it's BS.

The real question I have is is this an issue with XBOX or Bethesda? Is this an engine issue or a hardware issue. My guess is the XBOX Series X could easily run this at 60 but since parity with the S is mandated they held it back. Since it isn't coming to PS5 we'll never know though.
 
Phil and other people who work in this gaming industry know that they can lie, spin, talk bullshit all they want to sell their products. Then if things got blow up, all they have to do is apologize. They know they can treat their customers like idiots and easily get away with it.
 
You know, we're all overlooking something.

The game is locked at 30 on Bethesda's choice, but if it has the same kind of bespoke mod support Fallout 4 and Skyrim launched with, someone will have a mod to unlock the V-sync on Xbox shortly after the release as well.
 
They should put that in big bold letters to make a statement and put it on the front of the box. Those entrepreneur trailblazing stallions.
 
Rac3r said:
That's still not a "creative" choice. That means you have no choice. It's a limitation.
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The pictures you've quoted show that it is a choice if the developer is willing to make enough cut-backs.

Bethesda/Todd are not. Not at this point at least.
 
This fucking guy. This is not that hard to cop to even if you are spinning it. Say that the team loaded up the complexity or something so we could just laugh a little.
 
Represent. said:
Show me any evidence that goes against my post.

I mean the devs literally said it themselves.

They didnt want to make any cuts to their game.
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Are you seriously telling me that this game or indeed any game running at 30fps as opposed to 60fps plus is optimum. Or to run a game at 30fps is a design choice rather than a hardware limitation.
 
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Liamario said:
Are you seriously telling me that this game or indeed any game running at 30fps as opposed to 60fps plus is optimum.
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Yes. There are too many sacrifices that have to be made to get 60fps. Thats why its not as common. Devs would rather not limit literally everything in their game to hit a certain framerate. That is a fact.
Liamario said:
Or to run a game at 30fps is a design choice rather than a hardware limitation.
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Its a design choice made by limited hardware. If you MUST have 60fps, buy a PC. I will take it to the grave.
 
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If it looks like FF16 on 30 fps graphics mode, I'm not sure I can stand it. Jerky as fuck. Probably not buying for Series X if it's like that.

I'd settle for an unlocked mode up to 45ish like A Plague Tale.
 
He's half lying, it's a creative decision, but not by choice: devs could not figure out to get beyond 30 fps in their creative engine patched "upgraded" since 20+ years.

Where To Start At Work GIF by Barnaby
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But modders will.
 
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Liamario said:
Or to run a game at 30fps is a design choice rather than a hardware limitation.
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Phil wasn't trying to say that hardware doesn't put limits on players though, he is saying that devs make decisions about how to spend performance and that, while it's certainly possible to target 60fps, it's a tradeoff, and he trusts the devs to decide which tradeoffs are best for their game.

I dunno if it's the right decision or not, but the game looks dope, so people are gonna put up with it.
 
SF Kosmo said:
Phil wasn't trying to say that hardware doesn't put limits on players though, he is saying that devs make decisions about how to spend performance and that, while it's certainly possible to target 60fps, it's a tradeoff, and he trusts the devs to decide which tradeoffs are best for their game.

I dunno if it's the right decision or not, but the game looks dope, so people are gonna put up with it.
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That's not a creative decision. Creative decisions are not dictated by hardware. This decision was dictated by hardware. That's fine, that's their decision. I don't agree with it, give the option and let the people decide.
 
So are the recommended specs for 4k/30fps on PC? Curious to see if these hold up to release. Phil will be choking on apples if anyone can get 60fps out of that build.

Starfield PC system requirements

Minimum specs

  • OS: Windows 10 version 22H2 (10.0.19045)
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X, Intel Core i7-6800K
  • Memory: 16 GB RAM
  • Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 5700, NVIDIA GeForce 1070 Ti
  • DirectX: Version 12
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Storage: 125 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: SSD Required

Recommended specs

  • OS: Windows 10/11 with updates
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, Intel i5-10600K
  • Memory: 16 GB RAM
  • Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080
  • DirectX: Version 12
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Storage: 125 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: SSD Required
 
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