Have you heard the news? Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare from Activision and Sledgehammer Games is supposedly aiming for parity across all platforms that the game will be made available on. This is great news, right? Right? Wrong.
Things kicked off with an interview withGaming Bolt – a partial interview actually – where the site asked Bret Robbins, the creative director at Sledgehammer Games, exactly what the team’s position is on platform specifications for resolution and frame-rate. According to Robbins…
“Right, well you know we always strive for complete parity across all our platforms and you know this year will be no different,”
So let’s break this down a little bit before getting into the thick of it.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is set to release on the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4 and PC. Out of those five systems (with rumors that the Wii U may or may not get a version of the game) there has been word that the old-gen version of the game for the geriatric twins will be handled by a separate studio, as noted by Game Informer.
Why is this important to note? Because it means that Sledgehammer games has been freed up to only work across three platforms: the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. Now we already know that the PC version of the game is like the “whatever” port (has there ever been a Call of Duty after Modern Warfare that was as optimized as games likeBattlefield 3 or Just Cause 2?) But the Xbox One and PS4 happen to be the platforms to which Sledgehammer will focus a large majority of their attention.
In this regards, when Robbins says “parity across all our platforms” he’s talking about the ones that the team is working with. As we know, the highest end gaming rigs are in a league of their own, so “parity across all our platforms” basically leaves two consoles on the table: the Xbox One and PS4.
Now last year we had the debacle whereCall of Duty: Ghosts happened to be native 720p on the Xbox One and native 1080p on the PlayStation 4 –which, in the case of the latter, is almost double the pixel count than what the Xbox One produced.
If the team is “striving” for “parity” this time around, then we’re looking at a situation where the PS4 may not be utilized to its fullest. If previous benchmarks are anything to go by, such as the one regarding Allegorithmic’s Substance Engine, as reported by Gaming Bolt, and multiplatform releases are to be taken into consideration (e.g., Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition being 30fps on Xbox One and 60fps on PS4), then it’s been made pretty clear that the two consoles have very disparate system performance thresholds, with the PS4 clearly coming out on top.
Maintaining parity calls into question exactly why the studio would want to set an equal bar for both consoles when one system can clearly outperform the other?
In a way it almost seems like a retread of when Ubisoft released Watch Dogs with a purposefully gimped version on PC that required the good efforts of the modding community to bring up the game’s visual capabilities by unlocking certain files stored within the game’s software package.Ubisoft’s response to the community for unlocking the game’s true potential on PC? The mod could cause “various negative impacts”, as reported by PC Gamer. That’s completely ignoring the fact that the base game on PC (without the mod) had lots of “various negative impacts” on the gameplay for anyone using an AMD card, as noted by Forbes.
So does this mean that this will be the generation of forced parity? That games that could be better will be made for the lowest common system just to keep the platform holder(s) happy? As established, it’s not like the systems have coextensive hardware.
While removing Kinect as a standard in the XDK for the Xbox One may have freed up 10% of the GPU power, it’s no different than putting a bigger fuel injector in a V6 that has to race against a V8. There’s always going to be a performance edge for the bigger, faster hardware.
Now, on the upside, we don’t exactly know how much “parity” Sledgehammer will aim to keep between the PS4 and Xbox One. “Striving” for it is different than achieving it; and to the benefit of those who paid for a PlayStation 4 expecting games to take advantage of the better hardware, it still might happen if there’s an obvious way in which the team can’t bring up the Xbox One to match the PS4 in certain areas of the game’s performance.
Certainly, with phrases like the one Robbins dropped, it definitely makes you think long and hard about how much performance you’re actually going to get out of a system in the long haul that has a clear power advantage, but may be held back like a mouse in a trap for the sake of “parity”.
http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/20...rfares-xbox-one-ps4-parity-turn-into-a-trend/
Xbox One, the "home of call of duty" is holding cod back. The irony.
All these game delays are prolly due to devs tryna get games past 480p on the x1
Things kicked off with an interview withGaming Bolt – a partial interview actually – where the site asked Bret Robbins, the creative director at Sledgehammer Games, exactly what the team’s position is on platform specifications for resolution and frame-rate. According to Robbins…
“Right, well you know we always strive for complete parity across all our platforms and you know this year will be no different,”
So let’s break this down a little bit before getting into the thick of it.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is set to release on the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4 and PC. Out of those five systems (with rumors that the Wii U may or may not get a version of the game) there has been word that the old-gen version of the game for the geriatric twins will be handled by a separate studio, as noted by Game Informer.
Why is this important to note? Because it means that Sledgehammer games has been freed up to only work across three platforms: the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. Now we already know that the PC version of the game is like the “whatever” port (has there ever been a Call of Duty after Modern Warfare that was as optimized as games likeBattlefield 3 or Just Cause 2?) But the Xbox One and PS4 happen to be the platforms to which Sledgehammer will focus a large majority of their attention.
In this regards, when Robbins says “parity across all our platforms” he’s talking about the ones that the team is working with. As we know, the highest end gaming rigs are in a league of their own, so “parity across all our platforms” basically leaves two consoles on the table: the Xbox One and PS4.
Now last year we had the debacle whereCall of Duty: Ghosts happened to be native 720p on the Xbox One and native 1080p on the PlayStation 4 –which, in the case of the latter, is almost double the pixel count than what the Xbox One produced.
If the team is “striving” for “parity” this time around, then we’re looking at a situation where the PS4 may not be utilized to its fullest. If previous benchmarks are anything to go by, such as the one regarding Allegorithmic’s Substance Engine, as reported by Gaming Bolt, and multiplatform releases are to be taken into consideration (e.g., Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition being 30fps on Xbox One and 60fps on PS4), then it’s been made pretty clear that the two consoles have very disparate system performance thresholds, with the PS4 clearly coming out on top.
Maintaining parity calls into question exactly why the studio would want to set an equal bar for both consoles when one system can clearly outperform the other?
In a way it almost seems like a retread of when Ubisoft released Watch Dogs with a purposefully gimped version on PC that required the good efforts of the modding community to bring up the game’s visual capabilities by unlocking certain files stored within the game’s software package.Ubisoft’s response to the community for unlocking the game’s true potential on PC? The mod could cause “various negative impacts”, as reported by PC Gamer. That’s completely ignoring the fact that the base game on PC (without the mod) had lots of “various negative impacts” on the gameplay for anyone using an AMD card, as noted by Forbes.
So does this mean that this will be the generation of forced parity? That games that could be better will be made for the lowest common system just to keep the platform holder(s) happy? As established, it’s not like the systems have coextensive hardware.
While removing Kinect as a standard in the XDK for the Xbox One may have freed up 10% of the GPU power, it’s no different than putting a bigger fuel injector in a V6 that has to race against a V8. There’s always going to be a performance edge for the bigger, faster hardware.
Now, on the upside, we don’t exactly know how much “parity” Sledgehammer will aim to keep between the PS4 and Xbox One. “Striving” for it is different than achieving it; and to the benefit of those who paid for a PlayStation 4 expecting games to take advantage of the better hardware, it still might happen if there’s an obvious way in which the team can’t bring up the Xbox One to match the PS4 in certain areas of the game’s performance.
Certainly, with phrases like the one Robbins dropped, it definitely makes you think long and hard about how much performance you’re actually going to get out of a system in the long haul that has a clear power advantage, but may be held back like a mouse in a trap for the sake of “parity”.
http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/20...rfares-xbox-one-ps4-parity-turn-into-a-trend/
Xbox One, the "home of call of duty" is holding cod back. The irony.
All these game delays are prolly due to devs tryna get games past 480p on the x1
were multiplats on the PS3 holding last gen back then?
