Unity could never reach 1080p on PS4

Ubisoft has come under a ton of fire after trying to avoid the entire resolutiongate debate last week. Fans claimed that the Ps4 version in particular had suffered a downgrade in order to keep parity between both current-gen consoles. That may not be true, as one Ubisoft developer claims the game could never reach 1080p on Sony’s console.

During the latest GiantBomb podcast an email was sent to the crew and read out during the recording. The email in question seems to have come from an anonymous Ubisoft developer, although the credentials have not been completely confirmed yet. The email in questions addressed all of the fuss that has been kicked up over the last week over frame rate and resolution, with the developer in question saying 1080p was just never possible on either console.

I’m happy to enlighten you guys because way too much bullshit about 1080p making a difference is being thrown around. If the game is as pretty and fun as ours will be, who cares? Getting this game to 900p was a BITCH. The game is so huge in terms of rendering that it took months to get it to 720p at 30fps. The game was 9fps 9 months ago. We only achieved 900p at 30fps weeks ago. The PS4 couldn’t handle 1080p 30fps for our game, whatever people, or Sony and Microsoft say. Yes, we have a deal with Microsoft, and yes we don’t want people fighting over it, but with all the recent concessions from Microsoft, backing out of CPU reservations not once, but twice, you’re talking about a 1 or 2 fps difference between the two consoles. So yes, locking the framerate is a conscious decision to keep people bullshiting, but that doesn’t seem to have worked in the end.

Now some of that makes a lot of sense. I have no doubt that both versions could in fact reach 1080p, if you just chuck frame rate out of the window. At that resolution there were most probably differences between the two consoles, but I’m assuming Ubisoft couldn’t lock wither of them to 30FPS. Considering that’s pretty important, a drop in resolution makes sense.

The developer also claims that Sony and Microsoft both pushed for a visually stunning game over anything else, which is why so much has gone into making Unity look and feel like a next-gen experience.

Consider this, they started this game so early for next gen, MS and Sony wanted to push graphics first, so that’s what we did. I believe 50% of the CPU is dedicated to helping the rendering by processing pre-packaged information, and in our case, much like Unreal 4, baked global illumination lighting. The result is amazing graphically, the depth of field and lighting effects are beyond anything you’ve seen on the market, and even may surpass Infamous and others.

But again, does the lock at 1080p/60FPS really matter? I’ve been playing Shadow of Mordor on and off on PC lately, and while I’m able to hit 1080p I chose to lock the frame rate at 30FPS. Not because I couldn’t reach 60, but rather because at 30 I experienced no fluctuations (Ed’s note: fluck you, too!)  at all. That’s far more important than hitting double the frame rate half of the time, and I think a similar concession has been made with Unity.

Regardless, I’m really looking forward to Unity. I had the chance to give it a go at rAge, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. That, in the end, is what matters most.

Last Updated: October 16, 2014