Ubisoft Reveals Watch Dogs Will Run At 900p on PS4, 729p On Xbox One
This may come as a shock to the system if you were expecting Ubisoft's upcoming Watch Dogs title to run at Full HD 1080 (1920x1080) on your PlayStation 4 console, especially after Sony straight up said "the game will run at 1080p and 60 frames per second on the PS4" in a recent blog post, but it's actually going to run at 900p on Sony's game machine. If it comes as any consolation, that gives you bragging rights over your Xbox One brethren, who will see the game at 729p.
There was a bit of confusion after Sony posted those numbers, which have since been removed. To clarify things, Ubisoft revealed in a blog post of its own what resolution Watch Dogs will actually run at on each game console, both of which will enjoy a steady 30 frames per second. According to Creative Director Jonathan Morin, the decision to push a few more pixels onto the screen just wasn't important when compared to other areas of the game the design team could focus on.
"Resolution is a number, just like framerate is a number. All those numbers are valid aspects of making games," Morin explains. "But you make choices about the experience you want to deliver. In our case, dynamism is everything. Exploration and expression are everything. You want to have a steady framerate, but you want to have dynamism at the core of the experience. The same goes with resolution.
"People tend to look at corridor shooters, for example, where there’s a corridor and all the effects are on and it’s unbelievable, and they forget that if you apply those same global effects to an open city with people around and potential car crashes and guys in multiplayer showing up without warning, the same effect is applied to a lot of dynamic elements that are happening in every frame. So it becomes magnified in cost."
Watch Dogs has been in development for the past six years. It was originally scheduled to launch in November 2013, but was delayed for nearly seven months. Rather than use that time to pump more pixels into the game, Morin says hitting 1080p was never the goal and that it was more important to polish all aspects of gameplay.
Will those efforts pay off? We'll find out when Watch Dogs launches on May 27, 2014.
There was a bit of confusion after Sony posted those numbers, which have since been removed. To clarify things, Ubisoft revealed in a blog post of its own what resolution Watch Dogs will actually run at on each game console, both of which will enjoy a steady 30 frames per second. According to Creative Director Jonathan Morin, the decision to push a few more pixels onto the screen just wasn't important when compared to other areas of the game the design team could focus on.
"Resolution is a number, just like framerate is a number. All those numbers are valid aspects of making games," Morin explains. "But you make choices about the experience you want to deliver. In our case, dynamism is everything. Exploration and expression are everything. You want to have a steady framerate, but you want to have dynamism at the core of the experience. The same goes with resolution.
"People tend to look at corridor shooters, for example, where there’s a corridor and all the effects are on and it’s unbelievable, and they forget that if you apply those same global effects to an open city with people around and potential car crashes and guys in multiplayer showing up without warning, the same effect is applied to a lot of dynamic elements that are happening in every frame. So it becomes magnified in cost."
Watch Dogs has been in development for the past six years. It was originally scheduled to launch in November 2013, but was delayed for nearly seven months. Rather than use that time to pump more pixels into the game, Morin says hitting 1080p was never the goal and that it was more important to polish all aspects of gameplay.
Will those efforts pay off? We'll find out when Watch Dogs launches on May 27, 2014.
