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Richard Leadbetter of Digital Foundry: Why the return of 30fps console games is inevitable

angrod14

Member
People thinking "Pro" consoles will boost the games to 60FPS. PS4 Pro and Xbox One X ran the majority of games at 30FPS too, with increased resolution and graphic settings. This time they will probably advertise Pro consoles as "16K" capable machines with the games running at a factual 4-8K and still 30FPS.

Frame rate is a design choice. A PS2 can run at 60 if the devs prioritize frame rate over other aspects. But as is much easier to sell resolution, well, it is how it is.
 

darrylgorn

Member
100% facts. Normal people don't care if game is 30 or 60FPS. Framerate don't sell. Graphics sell.

Hey, who you calling normal people?

Anyway, again, we don't have to be victims of infidelity. You can please both the normies and nerdies and make even more monies.
 
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Not if the industry collective holds back on graphics just this gen. If we can manage to do that then we can have big graphical leaps again and maintain 60fps for future gens.
 

Moses85

Member
30FPS

Andy Richter GIF by Team Coco
 

darrylgorn

Member
Not if the industry collective holds back on graphics just this gen. If we can manage to do that then we can have big graphical leaps again and maintain 60fps for future gens.

You can please both parties right now.

It's just an unfortunate misconception that we need to compromise on graphics by including a performance mode in games.

We don't.

In fact we should have tiered performance and quality presets like they do for raytracing. High performance, balanced and high quality.
 
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darrylgorn

Member
I doubt that. The only indisputably next gen looking thing we've seen so far are the UE5 demos which run at 20-30fps.

There's nothing stopping a developer from making that a high quality mode and having other modes as well. The companies that develop and publish these games want to have a substantial revenue and profit margin which comes with more sales. Since it's not difficult to scale the engine, they shouldn't have any issues doing just that.
 
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There's nothing stopping a developer from making that a high quality mode and having other modes as well. The companies that develop and publish these games want to have a substantial revenue and profit margin which comes with more sales. Since it's not difficult to scale the engine, they shouldn't have any issues doing just that.
Modes only work for switching between high res, RT and FPS. I don't think it's possible to have modes which let you just switch between full blown next gen graphics 30fps and 8th gen graphics at 60fps.
 
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MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
What are you waiting for, it's clearly not framerate to you.
Tea Time Drink GIF by VH1

What's wrong with you? Are you really that but hurt that Returnal, The Last of Us Part I and possibly more are coming to PC? Why does it matter?

Let me spell it out for you:
  1. Ansphn Ansphn said that future PlayStation first party games won't be locked to 30FPS because games Horizon Forbidden West or God of War Ragnarök have options for higher framerates.
  2. I pointed out that these games are last gen at core so no wonder PS5 can run them at higher framerate.
  3. You listed 4 more games that are PS5 only and can run at 60FPS.
  4. I said that these games could easily work at PS4 at lower resolution, fidelity and 30FPS and that we will be able to test it once we have PC ports. But no, you have to make it about PCMR and PC vs. consoles.
What's so hard to understand? Seriously. :messenger_grinning_sweat:

If people are happy with graphical fidelity and design (AI, level complexity, interactivity, destruction etc.) of games like Forza Horizon 5 or God of War Ragnarök then no problem, 60FPS is here to stay. If you want to see a true next-generational games then you better kiss that 60FPS goodbye.

And yes, high framerate is important to me. I said that it's not important to normal people. People who don't spend their time on gaming forums.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
What's wrong with you? Are you really that but hurt that Returnal, The Last of Us Part I and possibly more are coming to PC? Why does it matter?

Let me spell it out for you:
  1. Ansphn Ansphn said that future PlayStation first party games won't be locked to 30FPS because games Horizon Forbidden West or God of War Ragnarök have options for higher framerates.
  2. I pointed out that these games are last gen at core so no wonder PS5 can run them at higher framerate.
  3. You listed 4 more games that are PS5 only and can run at 60FPS.
  4. I said that these games could easily work at PS4 at lower resolution, fidelity and 30FPS and that we will be able to test it once we have PC ports. But no, you have to make it about PCMR and PC vs. consoles.
What's so hard to understand? Seriously. :messenger_grinning_sweat:

If people are happy with graphical fidelity and design (AI, level complexity, interactivity, destruction etc.) of games like Forza Horizon 5 or God of War Ragnarök then no problem, 60FPS is here to stay. If you want to see a true next-generational games then you better kiss that 60FPS goodbye.

And yes, high framerate is important to me. I said that it's not important to normal people. People who don't spend their time on gaming forums.
Cracking Up Lol GIF

Keep going. :)
 

darrylgorn

Member
Modes only work for switching between high res, RT and FPS. I don't think it's possible to have modes which let you just switch between full blown next gen graphics 30fps and 8th gen graphics at 60fps.

Here's an example of the scalability options available to UE5 devs for the editor. Note, this one is managing to scale down for performance on a gtx1060, which is pretty impressive:

 
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01011001

Banned
No... that was not my argument.

My argument was that DF should not be using them as a litmus for what next gen current gen optimization/stress. I thought it was quite obvious.

you said, if it was a bigger team it would run at 60fps, I say if they ran the game at a lower resolution and/or lower settings it would run at 60fps as well.
and they already have such a settings profile on Series S that also still looks absolutely presentable.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
you said, if it was a bigger team it would run at 60fps, I say if they ran the game at a lower resolution and/or lower settings it would run at 60fps as well.
and they already have such a settings profile on Series S that also still looks absolutely presentable.
If it was a bigger team, this game would have a 60fps mode because they would have more resources to optimize their heavy in-house engine better. It's quite simple.

And no, changing the .ini settings on the consoles won't run it at a close to locked 60, when they can't even get it close to locked 30/40 now. They need a bit more cooking to get the above 60 ceiling for that mode. Which those games tend to run 70-90 unlocked.
 
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ACESHIGH

Banned
I don't see console style games maxing out a 8/16 CPU when running a game at 30 fps if properly coded.

Maybe they will start targeting 60 fps instead of locking to 60. And the 60 fps modes would run at sub 1080p but it's still possible.
 
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TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Of course 30 fps is going to become the norm for these current consoles and its the very reasons we need these pro consoles in our hands sooner rather than later
Hard disagree.
60fps isn't a reason for Mid-gen refreshers.
When the game can't hold 30fps on the simplest of games then we can talk.
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Doubt it these current consoles are going to be 1440p machines fast enough
What I meant is faster hardware gives prettier graphic in 30 fps.

There were games running 120 fps in the start at this gen. Then 60 fps. Now 30 fps.

A mid gen refresh or a next console will do the same.

No matter how powerful hardware you get, the developers will always priorities good looking graphic in low framerate over gameplay.
 

01011001

Banned
If it was a bigger team, this game would have a 60fps mode because they would have more resources to optimize their heavy in-house engine better. It's quite simple.

And no, changing the .ini settings on the consoles won't run it at a close to locked 60, when they can't even get it close to locked 30/40 now. They need a bit more cooking to get the above 60 ceiling for that mode. Which those games tend to run 70-90 unlocked.

the Series S is basically a locked 30fps with small dips.
the Series S has 1/3 of the GPU power, a slower CPU and slower memory...
the Series S runs the game at settings that still look very decent.

we would need to assume that the game is hard CPU limited if it can't hit 60fps at Series S settings.
I so far haven't seen evidence for that being the case.
even with the swarms of rats in the DF video the Series S had a higher framerate than the PS5, while having a slightly slower CPU, which indicates a GPU limitation in at leats these cases.
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
the Series S is basically a locked 30fps with small dips.
the Series S has 1/3 of the GPU power, a slower CPU and slower memory...
the Series S runs the game at settings that still look very decent.

we would need to assume that the game is hard CPU limited if it can't hit 60fps at Series S settings.
I so far haven't seen evidence for that being the case.
even with the swarms of rats in the DF video the Series S had a higher framerate than the PS5, while having a slightly slower CPU.
There are a lot of concessions made graphically to get it there.

On the X and the PS5 it's not locked in either 30 or 40, which goes back to my optimization point.
 

Markio128

Member
Not a single one of those pushed these machines. They were launch games, launch window games, and a ps3 remake lol

Oh you mean like Ghosts, Last of Us 2, Death Strandings, Days Gone, let me not even continue with the list. Games that push hardware near the end of the gen don’t run at 60. They never do.

You’ll get PS6 remakes at 60
Only time will tell. I still think all the late PS5/Xbox games will have a 60fps option because that is the standard that has now been set and I believe it is much easier to scale games on the latest consoles than it was on the previous gen. And it isn’t like the PS4 received a plethora of 60fps 1st party games in the first year or two before they started going 30fps, so the comparison is a little off.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Nah I don't buy it.

Come up with tricks to get around it. More powerful hardware isn't an excuse to waste resources. There's no need to be computing hundreds of thousands of rats when they're just delegated to on-rail set pieces
Was speaking about this below the DF Plague Tale, you are absolutely correct.

Also making custom engine for your game with small team, while deploying game to a lot of platforms, isn't really way to go.

And if anything, there is basically no difference between ultra and low:



Then maybe the game engine isn't really that scalable. Leadbetter knows very little and giving examples of two games, which looks like polished last gen games, MEH.

Wasn't recently new version of Unreal 5 where they aiming at 60fps instead of 30? Also like it or not 60FPS sells, people won't buy 120hz TVs, to play 30-40FPS games, if anything we now have VRR on both consoles, so why cap shit at 30/40? Makes zero sense.
 

Whitecrow

Banned
30 fps were never meant to disappear. Since, you know, they are playable, devs know that, and they will raise the graphics bar as high as they can sacrificing fps, as they have been doing since almost two decades now.

If anyone thought the opposite, was pure delusion, or not knowing how this works.
 

01011001

Banned
There are a lot of concessions made graphically to get it there.

On the X and the PS5 it's not locked in either 30 or 40, which goes back to my optimization point.

on SX and PS5 it runs pretty high settings,
the only way you'd convince me that it can't run at 60fps without additional optimization is if we had a way to run the Series S settings on Series X with the framerate lock set to 60fps.

I say this because on my PC, with a 3060ti, I have to run at 1440p + DLSS Quality mode and hand picked settings to get a 60fps lock.
1440p + DLSS Quality is about 900p native btw.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
the only way you'd convince me that it can't run at 60fps without additional optimization
WTF dude, I am the one saying it needs additional optimization that a larger team and more resources could have afforded their heavy in-house engine.

We have come full circle.
 
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