I don’t know about you, but almost every week I have red mark upon my forehead from a repeat face palm due to another ridiculous move by Ubisoft. Ubisoft, why, why do you repeatedly make stupid retractions and have uninformed members of your team saying what they shouldn’t or what you didn’t want us to hear? Yes we want the truth, but at least don’t say one thing and then another! It sparks others to argue and you cannot crowd control at all. If you really did mean to damage control, you really did the opposite.
So what did Ubisoft do this time? Well, Ubisoft came out and announced that Assassin’s Creed Unity will come to both PS4 and Xbox One at 900p, 30fps. Now this was weird. We all expected 1080p for PS4 and 900p for the Xbox One or at least something to edge the PS4 forward. It was strange to see that Ubisoft had developed these games on equal ground as the PS4 is surely more powerful. Well, not shortly after this announcement, senior producer Vincent Pontbraid said the following to VideoGamer.com on 6th October 2014:
“We decided to lock them at the same specs to avoid all the debates and stuff,”
Although this is an incredibly ridiculous move my Ubisoft and just plain stupid, the question is, will this take away debates in which Ubisoft “intended”? Nope! Debate around consoles just got worse. Fanboys were up in the air in debate over pure performance and which console was to “blame” over the reduction in quality. Whether it be; the lower CPU clock speed in the PS4 or the lower performance 8GB DD3 GPU of the Xbox One, somebody will have something to argue about.
Later, the above statement was retracted and the official Ubisoft blog stated:
“I simply chose the wrong words when talking about the game’s resolution, and for that I’m sorry.”…”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.”
i.e. he said something he really shouldn’t or didn’t mean to and Ubisort’s PR team steeped in to “damage control”.
Some think that because of the Xbox Ones’ higher clock speed, that rendering higher quantity of crowds would be easier to do and the PS4 was lacking in this regard…which I can see is possible but I don’t think that would hold up with the Xbox One; due to Microsoft choosing to opt for a slightly lower spec unit to supply with addition features. Looking at all multi-platform games out now, in almost every case, the Xbox One has the lower resolution, for a reason. But maybe they are on to something here.
Although this is true that Ubisoft’s main problem over the limited hardware was that Assians’s Creed: Unity has been showcased with dense areas and thriving cities. With the PS4 and Xbox One, this cannot be done unless sacrifices are to be made in terms of resolution and/or frame rate. It is true that both consoles are almost identical parts just with slight variations in performance, but are they really that much difference with such a jump we are currently seeing in hardware/software?
Where do I stand on this whole debacle? Well, I do honestly think that maybe if Ubisoft tried they could squeeze a slightly better version for the PS4, but I do think because of the goal they have set was just too much for both CPU’s in terms of core performance and really could not get what they wanted in terms of graphical/processing capabilities. Unfortunately, today’s consoles have not kept up with the times, and software is moving ahead at lightning speed. If you look at the current performance in products we are seeing today, the PS4 and Xbox One are just going to become less and less different and will be closer than you think in no time.
I do believe in the future we will see 1080p, 60fps on this generation consoles, but by the time we see it, PC will have far surpassed this stage as we have already started seeing for a while now, and it’s a shame. Also 4K is becoming more popular and I guarantee we will not see this on the current generation. Sony and Microsoft wanted this to be an 8 to 10 year cycle, but I cannot see it happening. 5 years? Maybe.
Update 16/10/2014:
Neogaf member BruiserBear created a thread in regards to an unofficial statement on this weeks Bomcast detailing how hard Unity was to develop for even the PS4. You can find the thread with an accurate quote here.
