Blizzard Entertainment is known for its games running well on a variety of hardware. Such is the case with Overwatch but it’s still amazing to hear that roughly 22 percent of the player base on PC is playing with integrated GPUs. Such GPUs are usually found in ultrabooks and budget notebooks.
This was revealed by Blizzard senior software engineer Ryan Greene at GDC 2017 (via PC Gamer). Greene said that the goal was to hit 60 FPS with recommended specs and 30 FPS with the minimum. The latter involved focusing on lower-end hardware.
“Not everybody was excited at first, but as we got going on it, people really felt the value in it. We set up playtest labs with various machines all configured with different hardware. We got different people to play on it, and they were surprised at how well it ran, and how much it felt like Overwatch.” This also led to improved optimization on higher-end systems.
What are your thoughts on this approach? Let us know in the comments.
