Ubisoft recently announced that Assassin’s Creed: Unity would be running at 900p/30 FPS on both the PS4/Xbox One. As you might imagine, this triggered much outrage among games especially after producer Vincent Pontbriand claimed this was done to avoid debates between both versions.
Ubisoft senior communications manager Gary Steinman took to Ubiblog to clarify that, “Ubisoft does not constrain its games. We would not limit a game’s resolution. And we would never do anything to intentionally diminish anything we’ve produced or developed.
Pontbriand also commented, stating that, “We’ve spent four years building the best game we could imagine. Why would we ever do anything to hold it back? I simply chose the wrong words when talking about the game’s resolution, and for that I’m sorry.”
Steinman stated that Unity was “pushing the new-gen systems more than any other Ubisoft game has ever done. A game’s final resolution isn’t set until late in the development cycle. This is notable because the team has dedicated much of the past few months to optimizing Unity to reach 900p with a consistent 30 frames per second.
“Considering the sheer number of pixels that are being moved around at all times – which affects both the CPU and GPU – that’s a significant achievement, especially as Assassin’s Creed Unity will release when the new-gen consoles are barely more than a year old. (As with all hardware, it becomes easier to optimize with more experience and software/middleware solutions that only come with time.)”
While 1080p resolution and a 60 FPS frame rate are considered the “gold standard” in today’s gaming world, Pontbriand said that. “We made the right decision to focus our resources on delivering the best gameplay experience, and resolution is just one factor. There is a real cost to all those NPCs, to all the details in the city, to all the systems working together, and to the seamless co-op gameplay. We wanted to be absolutely uncompromising when it comes to the overall gameplay experience. Those additional pixels could only come at a cost to the gameplay.”
Do you agree? Assassin’s Creed: Unity will be out this November for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4 and PC so we’ll have a chance to find out how much of a difference it really makes.