• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Why do game developers neglect 1080p on current gen consoles

I am a little bit curious why so few games these days give a 1080p option. Most games have a graphics mode which targets up to native 4k with a 30fps target and a performance mode with a target of 1440p and 60fps.
However I personally would rather have an option to have higher graphic settings at 1080p with a 60fps target.

I actually do own a 4k tv, but my Sony tv is doing a very good job with outputting even 720p material, so I would be totally comfortable with 1080p.

However I am even more curious about the decision to push for resolutions over 1080p on consoles, since it’s a fact that even in the US only 50% of households do own a 4k television, so for people without a 4k television, they can either play on a PC screen which is normally smaller or worse a lot of extra performance of the current gen consoles is wasted.

So is there any particular reason why game developers push so hard for higher resolutions? It’s not like game developers are getting paid by the tv manufacturers to boost tv sales…
 
Wait a few years for developers to get accustomed to the hardware in the new consoles and you'll start to see the resolution drops.

The Matrix demo was hovering around 1440p on PS5 and Series X. That for me is the sweet spot in terms of resolution for all next gen games. Chasing anything above that is a waste of resources.
 
Last edited:

Rykan

Member
Because everyone has a financial interest in pushing 4K.

Video games are big business at the end of the day and game sells can push the sells of other electronics like 4K TVs and 4K monitors. Also native 4K games were apart of the marketing push with the new consoles.
Outside of Sony, and MS to a lesser extend, literally no developer or publisher has a financial interest in pushing 4k.

The reason this isn't done is simple. It requires more everything. More optimization, More QA testing, more development.
 
Last edited:

Sega Orphan

Banned
Because games don't need it. There have been a couple that were 1080P and then upscaled. Returnal was 1080P if I remember correctly. I think some sections of Gears 5 with DRS got down to 1080P.
 

Sega Orphan

Banned
On which hardware?
Series X. From Digital Foundry.

"To get the basics out of the way first, Gears 5 retains the use of dynamic resolution scaling, but based on pixel counting a selection of shots, it seems to average out at around 1728p during gameplay, with full 2160p manifesting in less busy situations. Interestingly, the lower bounds is still 1080p - just as it was on Xbox One X - but it's extremely uncommon for resolution to hit this level. By comparison, Xbox One X could drop to near 1080p much more often."
 

ParaSeoul

Member
It's only the west that uses "muh power" excuse to make boring 4k photorealistic games about walking through corridors of endless cutscenes.

Square were ahead of the curve
1204543-ffxiii_us_ps3_front.jpg
 

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
1080p looks very low for me nowadays. I got spoiled by 4k. There is no coming back
Tbh even 4k is too low and looks aliased without good aa technique
im fine with 1440p actually, but then i game on monitor.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
1080p looks very low for me nowadays. I got spoiled by 4k. There is no coming back
Tbh even 4k is too low and looks aliased without good aa technique
Agreed.

Big difference in clarity. For similar differences, play a 4k movie disc vs a BR. Even Netflix 4k content (which people say is gimped 4k as it's done through the net) still looks better than their regular content.

Then again, I got a 4k tv like many people. Maybe playing high res content like this on a 1080p tv makes no real difference.
 
Last edited:

vkbest

Member
Why would you want to go backwards? 4k 60 fps should be the bare minimum.
Because there are people with Full HD tv yet, it’s ridiculous to get higher resolution with lower framerate and quality settings. I don’t know what is the ratio new consoles/4k tv, but there are more FullHD tv than 4k in general
 

SkylineRKR

Member
1080p sets aren't the norm anymore. Most TVs you'll see being offered are 4k. I barely see 1080p sets around in the wild. They're probably still there, but most households seem to have upgraded. Or downgraded, as some had some top of the line 1080p sets and now a shitty 4K.
Meanwhile, Nintendo makes 720p games like a boss.

It's only the west that uses "muh power" excuse to make boring 4k photorealistic games about walking through corridors of endless cutscenes.

Yeah no one wants or expects a Switch Pro.
 

supernova8

Banned
Wait a few years for developers to get accustomed to the hardware in the new consoles and you'll start to see the resolution drops.

The Matrix demo was hovering around 1440p on PS5 and Series X. That for me is the sweet spot in terms of resolution for all next gen games. Chasing anything above that is a waste of resources.

You could say the same for 1440p versus 1080p though. Maybe internal resolution will be 1080p or 1440p but I doubt they will ever stop pushing for 4K visuals (at least checkerboard/upscale etc). It would be like PS3 games dropping down to PS2 resolutions just because they got accustomed to the new hardware.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Because there are people with Full HD tv yet, it’s ridiculous to get higher resolution with lower framerate and quality settings. I don’t know what is the ratio new consoles/4k tv, but there are more FullHD tv than 4k in general

4K (or whatever) downsampled to 1080p looks significantly better than native 1080p on a 1080p TV.

And I'd bet a lot of money on 4K TVs being in majority among PS5/XSX owners.
 
Last edited:
But honestly why not let the player decide what they want. It’s not a big effort to give a 60fps quality setting with RT at 1080p.

It’s just a fact that many people have still a full hd tv and for those a lot of the power is wasted for rendering the game at a resolution the tv does not support.

For me personally 4k is also no real game changer (although it’s nice to have), RT however is a game changer and once you have played a game in 60fps, going back to 30 feels very bad.
 

Graciaus

Member
Because there are people with Full HD tv yet, it’s ridiculous to get higher resolution with lower framerate and quality settings. I don’t know what is the ratio new consoles/4k tv, but there are more FullHD tv than 4k in general
Technology advances. Either get with it or be left behind. Catering to people stuck in 2010 is not the way to go.
 

Rockman33

Member
I am a little bit curious why so few games these days give a 1080p option. Most games have a graphics mode which targets up to native 4k with a 30fps target and a performance mode with a target of 1440p and 60fps.
However I personally would rather have an option to have higher graphic settings at 1080p with a 60fps target.

I actually do own a 4k tv, but my Sony tv is doing a very good job with outputting even 720p material, so I would be totally comfortable with 1080p.

However I am even more curious about the decision to push for resolutions over 1080p on consoles, since it’s a fact that even in the US only 50% of households do own a 4k television, so for people without a 4k television, they can either play on a PC screen which is normally smaller or worse a lot of extra performance of the current gen consoles is wasted.

So is there any particular reason why game developers push so hard for higher resolutions? It’s not like game developers are getting paid by the tv manufacturers to boost tv sales…
Only 50% of all the households own a 4K tv. Fair enough.

But how many gamers own a 4K tv? I’d guess it’s over 85%.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
Because a full 1080p framebuffer system yields way too many missed samples for rendering quality. A 1080p, depth buffer, FX buffer, tone mapping buffer, shadow casting buffer, color buffer, normal map pass buffer, etc.. just yields too low of a level for fidelity these days.
 

01011001

Banned
does Horizon Forbidden West count? that looks like 1080p at least 🤣
although I haven't played the latest patch that supposedly fixed the graphics somewhat.

but for real, they don't go down to 1080p because usually it doesn't look great on a big 4K screen. also because games now usually use TAA they want to have as high of a resolution as possible as TAA looks increasingly more muddy and aetifact ridden the lower the target resolution.
and post processing and high frequency detail also gets less presentable the lower the res
 
Last edited:

fart town usa

Gold Member
I thought performance mode on PS5 was largely 1080p/60fps?

I dunno. I don't own a 4k TV so I've been playing on performance mode with PS5. I did turn on the Ray Tracing with CP2077 and I noticed visual improvements but my god, the framerate was effing terrible and I say that as someone who is used to 30fps or lower.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
I thought performance mode on PS5 was largely 1080p/60fps?

I dunno. I don't own a 4k TV so I've been playing on performance mode with PS5. I did turn on the Ray Tracing with CP2077 and I noticed visual improvements but my god, the framerate was effing terrible and I say that as someone who is used to 30fps or lower.

Most performance modes are at least 1440p, many are even higher. Some shitty devs can only manage 1080p.
 
As someone who has three 5 year old perfectly fine 1080p tvs (a 55" set i bought and a 50" set inherited from my late pops and my gfs tv), I see no reason to upgrade. Unlike some on here, I am scraping by. I work 40-60hours a week, have a house with gf, and we both total less than 75k for the household income. Bills add up, especailly now with inflation and gas prices.
It was painful enough buying the ps5 at msrp (after 1.4 years of trying).
That being said, I can't justify spending the loot for 4k when I have two 1080p sets. One of which isn't even being used, as we don't want a tv in the bedroom (bedroom is for sleeping, changing, and sex, have a living room and dedicated 40ftx 50ft game room)

So just getting the ps5, I played GTA5, and wooo looks amazing. Even better than pc in some ways (yeah i know bad af filtering, but the colors are more vibrant and I'm not seeing any jaggies, my 3060ti with 27montior the jaggies stand out, also don't see rtx settings on pc gta5).

The thing is it has fidelity mode for 4k resolution and 30fps. Why doesn't this mode have 60 or 120fps for 1080p. Why are these modes fixed?
Can't they detect and scale accordingly? A simple programing if statement would do the trick.

if(display > 1080p) {
fpsCAP = 30; } else
fpsCAP = 60; }

See even i can come up with the code for it.

Fidelity should be 60 for 1080p. As it is now i have to use performanceRT and loose some settings.

I am sure other games are like this too.
If not they need pc like sliders.

And yes many of us aren't all super rich, or have families, and don't throw out perfectly fine tv sets.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom