Gaming Industry to drop 60 FPS Standard?

One of the largest debates lately amongst PC and console gamers alike has been: what is the best frame rate to run your games at? Frame rate, or frames per second, is the frequency at which frames are displayed to your TV or monitor. PC gamers in particular have the ability to control their fps to a certain extent, since the game runs across a wide variety of different machines with different capabilities. Certain game effects are customizable in order to match your hardware’s ability and to essentially fine tune your fps. For consoles however, game developers know exactly what the hardware specs will be for the particular console or consoles they are developing for.  Therefore, although console games will not have the potential to look as good as PC, they will almost always run smoother due to the fact the developers knew what kind of specs they were working with. This is for the same reason that the IPhone runs a lot smoother than any android: its software capabilities are limited to the known hardware, whereas android is much more customizable due to the fact it runs across a wide range of devices. So the gaming industry, or specifically the developers, set the standards for which console games should run at. Generally, console gamers are subject to these standards while PC gamers have the ability to customize and fine tune their games, and thus the debate.

This generalization between PC and console gamers was much more valid until recently, when one of the biggest gaming companies, Bethesda, released they would be restricting their new game, Evil Within, to 30 fps on the PC version. This decision apparently came from their game director who wanted all versions to look and feel the same. But he is not alone in the movement to go back towards the 30 fps standard.  In a recent interview with TechRadar, Nicolas Guérin, a Design Director at Ubisoft, revealed their stance on the future of frame rate in the gaming industry: "At Ubisoft, for a long time we wanted to push 60 fps," Guérin admitted. "I don't think it was a good idea because you don't gain that much from 60 fps and it doesn't look like the real thing. It's a bit like The Hobbit movie, it looked really weird." The point developers are trying to get across to gamers is: is it really worth it? Much of internet debate on these topics has highlighted one main issue: who cares? Some people say they can clearly see a difference between 30 and 60 fps while people on the other side of the fence think they’re insane. Nicolas, who claims 60 fps is twice as hard to achieve as 30, believes the industry as a whole is dropping this standard and focusing more on rendering quality of the picture and image. The Creative Director, Alex Amancio, added that 60 fps is still great for first-person shooters, but not all the great for action adventure titles like Ubisoft’s new Assassin’s Creed Unity.

If we view the native resolutions and frame rates of the most recent console games, we can see the pattern Alex refers to emerging: http://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-one/PS4_vs._Xbox_One_Native_Resolutions_and_Framerates. The action adventure games like Thief and GTA are locked into 30 fps whereas first person shooters like Battlefield and Call of Duty are run at 60 fps. Whatever the standards the gaming industry sets, it is certain that the gamers will be subject to them, whether they like them or not. And PC gamers, who thought they weren’t subject to these standards, but only restricted by the hardware they could afford, may soon be in for a surprise.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ubisoft-assassin-s-creed-unity-fps,27855.html

http://www.diadu.net/?p=206

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.862342-Update-2-How-why-are-console-gamers-satisfied-with-30-fps