After a number of days of statements, soundbites and general confusion Ubisoft have released a blog post that should clear up any questions about the resolution of Assassin’s Creed Unity.
The debacle started when Videogamer ran a story with quotes from Senior Producer Vincent Pontbriand which may have implied that Ubisoft had lowered the resolution for the PlayStation 4 version of the game.
“Absolutely not,” Pontbriand says. “We’ve spent four years building the best game we could imagine. Why would we ever do anything to hold it back?”
Ubisoft go on to say that the resolution “isn’t set until late in the development cycle” and the team have been working hard to lock the game at 900p and 30fps. “Considering the sheer number of pixels that are being moved around at all times – which affects both the CPU and GPU – that’s a significant achievement,” they add.
“We know a lot of gamers consider 1080p with 60 frames per second to be the gold standard, especially on the new generation of consoles,” Pontbriand says. “We realize we had also pushed for 1080p in some of our previous games, including AC4. But we made the right decision to focus our resources on delivering the best gameplay experience, and resolution is just one factor. There is a real cost to all those NPCs, to all the details in the city, to all the systems working together, and to the seamless co-op gameplay. We wanted to be absolutely uncompromising when it comes to the overall gameplay experience. Those additional pixels could only come at a cost to the gameplay.”
As for those conspiracy theorists who think Microsoft asked Ubisoft to deliberately limit one console version over another, Ubisoft (for once) make things very clear.
“Ubisoft does not constrain its games. We would not limit a game’s resolution. And we would never do anything to intentionally diminish anything we’ve produced or developed.”
Source: Ubisoft
Stefan L
Rather cheeky of Ubi to write that “one outlet” used those quotes “to suggest we lowered the resolution on the PlayStation 4,” when there was no suggestive language at all in VideoGamer’s original post.
Pontbriand’s statements were mildly confusing and muddled and it was very easy for people to read them in the matter of fact fashion that VG posted them – literally just bare quotes and basic context – and jump to their own conclusions based on historical resolution disparity between the two consoles and the usual conspiracy theories.
CR8ZYH0RSE
If only they released this statement in the first place after the “locked at 900p” fiasco,then maybe it could’ve been put to bed?
dave87fez
Microsoft told him to say that ;o)
a inferior race
How long till we get the first serious comment that is like this.
Khaliel
And that’s why the PC version is already confirmed to be 1200p…
Starman
They should just make the PS4 version 1080/60fps with really bad slowdown and be like “there, we tried to tell you!”
moonchild82
Oh you mean like Blizzard did with Diablo 3 on the XBox One…
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-diablo-3-xbox-one-1080p-patch-performance-analysis
I jest of course, but still, don’t you think you’d be happier if instead of getting all your gaming news from TheSixthaxis (and defiling the comments sections with your unmitigated fanaticism) you went on the OXM website instead? Or, if you insist on using a PlayStation-centric site, try Dualshockers; the comments section, much like your good self, is filled to the brim with hate.
MrYd
As with all DF articles, that one is quite amusing. A great example of how 1080p looks a _lot_ better than 900p, and yet they deny it and claim 900p is somehow acceptable just because it’s all the XBox they obviously love so much can handle.
It’s funny how they’ve gone from “XBox is best” (even when it clearly wasn’t, or the differences were negligible) last generation to “XBox is nearly as good, and certainly the difference isn’t enough to recommend the PS4” (because obviously they’re completely blind) this time.
They’re actually quite clever to be able to fool enough people with big long articles and some careful selections of pictures.
Starman
A little uncalled for don’t you think?
Starman
To be honest I find your post to me very hateful and unnecessary and would like some acknowledgment of it from a moderator. I may have opposing views but I try to keep it civil and enjoy the debate. I’ve visited TSA since it started and enjoy the articles and clutter free site layout. I’m not going anywhere so I suggest skipping my comments or presenting a counter argument in a less offensive way.
dave87fez
Troll. Yawn
Stefan L
Yeah, I certainly don’t see anything wrong in what Starman said here. It’s hardly a dig at Ubisoft or the PS4 and more about the somewhat irrational expectation that the PS4 is always going to trump the XBO.
Erroneus
But then you have to wonder what all that extra power in PS4 is used for? If the NPC’s takes up lots of CPU, which is fairly equal in the the two consoles. What are the extra power, in term of more shaders, more bandwith and faster bandwith used for in the PlayStation 4?
I guess we will see when the game has been released. It’s still a bit disappointing it can’t hit 1080p, which should be standard for all games released today. 30FPS is good enough for a third-person action adventure game.
Can’t wait to see what Naughty Dog can pull out of the PS4 and set a goal for other devs of what’s possible on the PS4.
double-o-dave
Well I guess there’s now a possibility it may hit 1080 on the PS4. It does appear however, without the upset gamers raising there voices Ubisoft may of happily left it at 900 without attempting to use some of that extra juice… who knows?
dave87fez
This. I’ve no doubt Naughty Dog will set the standards for this generation (yet again)
plutoniumdragon
Clearly there were very good reasons why that APU was chosen, but I’m guessing this isn’t going to be the only game that’s going to end up being CPU limited….
TheShepanator
The ps4 gpu has a direct BUS to the cpu cache & also answers to the same instruction set. Meaning when the gpu is idling (about 60% of the time per frame) it can grab tasks from the cpu and help it out.
>http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/inside_the_playstation_4_with_mark_.php
The only reason ubisoft would say the cpu is a bottleneck is if they’re too lazy to implement the GP-GPU system or if they signed a parity clause with microsoft.
The only confusion was within ubisoft itself, on how they were going to break this news.
plutoniumdragon
Indeed, as I alluded to in the other thread:) Simple lack of optimisation seems to be the most likely reason here, but apart from Ubi and MS who really knows?
Certainly the PS4 has a major Compute advantage over the XB1 simply because the GPU is more powerful, but how many devs are going to bother with the extra work to optimise Compute tasks when it won’t make *as much* difference on the XB1 and even less on most PCs? (Mantle doesn’t look to be as popular as AMD would no doubt like either, atm)
Obviously AAA exclusives have no excuse not to look stunning though :)