Watch Dogs Graphics and Gameplay: PC Vs. Xbox One, With Surprising Results 210
MojoKid writes: Normally, the question of whether a game runs better on the PC or a console is a no-brainer, at least for PC users. Watch Dogs, however, with its problematic and taxing PC play, challenges that concept. And since the gap between consoles and PCs is typically smallest at the beginning of the console generation, HotHardware decided to take the Xbox One out for a head-to-head comparison against the PC with this long-awaited title. What was found may surprise you. Depending on just how much horsepower your PC has, the Xbox One (and possibly the PS4 though that wasn't compared) might be the better option. There's no question that the PC can look better, even before you factor in the mods that have been released to date, but unless you've spent $300 or more on a fairly recent GPU, you're not going to be able to run the game at sufficiently high detail to benefit from the enhanced image quality and resolution. If you have a Radeon HD 7950 / R9 280 or an NVIDIA card with greater than 4GB of RAM or a GeForce GTX 780 / 780 Ti, you can happily observe Watch Dogs make hash out of the Xbox One — but statistically, only a minority of gamers have this sort of high-end hardware.
This comparison should be viewed in light of the recent allegations that the PC version's graphics were deliberately handicapped.
Unless you've spent $300 on a GPU... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unless you've spent $300 on a GPU... (Score:4, Interesting)
Forget 2007. The game is not even much of a topic. Bland enough to not make as much of an impact as it was advertised to do. Watch_Dogs and Titanfall are both disappointments. Happy I didn't get caught up in the hype for them. Need to be wary of Dragon Age next.
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Re:Unless you've spent $300 on a GPU... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am Jack's total lack of surprise.
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What about Titanfall was a specific disappointment?
I've owned it since day one and thoroughly enjoyed it. In many ways it was a breath of fresh air that shook up a lot of the cruft of modern progression based multiplayer shooters. I will acknowledge that there were a couple of rough edges at launch (mostly commonly expected but inexplicably missing minor features) however just about all of those have been resolved in updates. Still, I had more fun playing it than I have a game of this genre since probabl
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Actually the best way to get console fanboys (yes there are girls as well), who are normally at each others throats to actually agree together is when PC fanboys criticize consoles. Still a high end (and more expensive) PC will always beat a console in terms of performance, however most PC's are not high end (as per the article) so the so called elitist criticism is rather childish.
Argue selection (Score:2)
Still a high end (and more expensive) PC will always beat a console in terms of performance
Instead of performance, argue selection. There are more PC games not available for any given console than games for some console not on PC at all. Unless you're a fan of a particular first party universe (like the Smash Bros. universe) or a genre that historically gets ignored on PC (like platform fighting or JRPGs), you'll find more to choose from on PC.
Oh, and FRAND standards aren't completely proprietary, but they aren't free either.
Re: Unless you've spent $300 on a GPU... (Score:2)
you do realize /r/pcmasterrace is tongue-in-cheek at best? Something like /r/circlejerk
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You can port up but you can't port down.
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You can port up but you can't port down.
Well, it's not impossible. I can name several games which have been ported from PC to less-powerful consoles.
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Quake 3 looked really good on the Dreamcast.
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What was the typical resolution for playing games at the time? The Dreamcast did 640x480, and it looked fine with a VGA box or an S-Video cable.
Three indie PC-to-console ports (Score:2)
PC games designed with future console port in mind (Score:2)
you get a lot of console to PC ports but hardly a sniff in the other direction.
You can port up but you can't port down.
Of course you can port down if the game is designed for such. An indie studio's debut game is often released as a PC exclusive, even if it's controller-friendly, because console makers prefer experienced companies. Once sales pick up, a game might gain interest from a licensed publisher, and then the console port is based on the game's controller support.
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Xbone and PS4 are like $500 each. I can get a PC that will blow them both away for that price.
A PS4 costs $399. You can get an 8-core PC with 8GB of RAM for that price?
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Unless you've spend $300 on an xbox... (or whatever they cost).
Basically PC games makes sense because most people already have a PC (or Mac). Currently, except for some high end recently released shooters (like watchdogs) in a competitive environment, you don't need a high end GPU and you can get by with a reasonably cheap one less than the cost of a console, or even play on a laptop.
Ten years ago with a mid-range system you would tweak and poke the settings trying to get the best view you could get withou
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Basically PC games makes sense because most people already have a PC (or Mac).
In what way does PC gaming make more sense? I have a gaming PC that actually runs Linux (ie. Fedora) as my primary and only OS although I do have virtual machines which I hardly every run. Normally a Linux distribution will not run "Games for Windows" without an emulator which in my case I could not be bothered to do, however if the game is web based I normally can run it. I can even run EMU games such as NES, SNES, Megadrive etc. Having said that I actually prefer console games over PC games.
IMHO the gam
Wine is not an emulator (Score:2)
Normally a Linux distribution will not run "Games for Windows" without an emulator which in my case I could not be bothered to do
Wine is not an emulator; it is a PE executable loader and an independent reimplementation of the Win32 API. This means Wine is a "Windows emulator" to the extent that Fedora is a "UNIX emulator". Or do games using the "Games for Windows Live" library have particular problems with third-party Win32 reimplementations the way games using PunkBuster do [winehq.org]? Or to which "emulator" were you referring?
I can even run EMU games such as NES, SNES, Megadrive etc.
With the Retrode discontinued, what do you use to make ROM images of your NES, Super NES, and Mega Drive cartridges fo
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I have a gaming PC that actually runs Linux (ie. Fedora) as my primary and only OS
Not many people are stupid enough to explicitly choose an unsupported OS to use on their dedicated gaming box. You are the absolute tale end of the bell curve, and I question your sanity for making this choice. At the very least, you're a sadist.
Deliberate anti-Wine measures (Score:2)
Macs are PCs.
True in the sense that Macs are general-purpose computing devices where the person who owns it controls what computing it does. True in the sense that games work once you buy, install, and reboot into a copy of Windows. But false in the sense that they are compatible out of the box with "PC games" that have deliberate anti-Wine measures [winehq.org].
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Watch Dogs is just a shitty port. But from what I heard, the rather modest (sub-$150) GTX 650Ti will handle Titanfall better than the Xbox One.
Still stuck with an Athlon XP 6000+ (Score:3)
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Have you tried Daggerfall?
i haven't done any gaming in years... (Score:3, Funny)
but when i watched the videos it made me feel like i was 23 again! ...but only in the sense that the graphics looked like something 2003. i guess i haven't missed much if this is the most hyped game of this generation...wow.
$300 for a GPU (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanhile, the end result doesn't look THAT much better than the PS3, with its measly GeForce 7900 series.
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Because you no longer need the best card in the store to make new games look decent if running at the monitor's native resolution. You can still crank things up if you want and if you have a monitor that can handle it, but most people really can't discern the detail difference.
Re:$300 for a GPU (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanhile, the end result doesn't look THAT much better than the PS3, with its measly GeForce 7900 series.
This is typical. I don't even understand what this story is about. Yes, you need a $300 GPU in your PC to play a brand new AAA title for a brand new console generation. This happens every generation and for about a year the console people will be shouting "Nanner nanner bo bo" at us... But next year we'll only need a $150 card, and the year after that a $75 card. They'll still need their console and its price wont get cut in half every year.
How do PC gamers address this problem? We don't play AAA titles designed for a console the same year that console was released. They suck for PC anyway.
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How do PC gamers address this problem? We don't play AAA titles designed for a console the same year that console was released. They suck for PC anyway.
And, they also might have less tweaks for graphics so that in a few years when that $75 card can run the game at max settings, you still can't get any better quality with a $300 card (which matches today's $700 cards). All the $300 card will do is allow you to run at a higher overall resolution, which eventually will start to expose things like lower polygon counts, lack of anti-aliasing (even injected after the fact sometimes doesn't work), etc.
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A $150 card will beat the Xbone right now.
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Do you have to connect that video card to anything, like, say, a computer?
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Indeed. And in this review, [youtu.be] the guy explains how to build a solid gaming PC for $500, same price as the quite weaker Xbox One (before they got rid of the Kinect).
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Meanhile, the end result doesn't look THAT much better than the PS3, with its measly GeForce 7900 series.
I actually bought it for my PS3, and the graphic quality seems pretty good to me. Of course, I'm more about the game play than anything else.
It's pretty fun, but a lot more driving & gunplay than I was expecting, and there's no real feeling of consequence.
It's easy to get good karma simply by catching criminals, and if you accidentally kill a bystander, it's a minor hit to your karma. I'd expect it to tank, but it doesn't. Hacking people's bank accounts seems to not have any effect, which seems like it
Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Say what? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, pretty much. Watch Dogs doesn't look nearly as good as plenty of PC games out right now, and runs worse than most.
This is nothing more than a deliberately handicapped, badly ported console game. The author is being a shill for the XBone, but the truth of the matter is that he's hiding Ubisoft's dirty downgrade of the game.
PCs were capable of far more than these machines a year before they were released. Now the comparison is just a bad joke.
because it fucking is (Score:3)
maybe the got some straight up cash for it. it's not like there wasn't a scandal about such bullshittery already.
I mean, fuck, we've ALREADY had articles about shit dogs having a pretty shitty pc port that has features it has disabled on purpose to prevent the pc version from looking better.
why the fuck would they choose watchdogs for doing this comparison? did the at least use the tweaks to bring the pc visual quality BACK to what it was on pre-release demo videos of the game? since you can do that on
Re:because it fucking is (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's check the differences. On a PC I can still watch a DVD on my big screen at the same time. Note the appear equally as large as my PC screen is far closer to me than my big screen TV. On my PC I can play a full range of FTP MMO, free flash games on the internet. I can browse the internet while watching TV. Never to forget I have a fully functional upgradable, dual bootable Computer and not just a games console. I can also buy much cheaper games without having to pay a quite expensive console tax and games discount sooner. With PC at a lan party everyone has their own screen so far better multi-player gaming. I have found every console port to be not that good games pretty much dumbed down PC games with clumsy controls.
When comparing a console to a PC, you are really only comparing the additional cost of turning a PC into a gaming machine versus the console and the loss of use of your TV or a second TV (youch, you have just paid for your PC gaming rig). Gaming consoles of course do suit a particular IQ range of the video gaming market, there is not doubt about that and I'll stop there.
Multiple PCs and multiple copies (Score:2)
I can also buy much cheaper games without having to pay a quite expensive console tax
With consoles, you can often buy one copy for the household instead of a separate copy for each player. I'm not aware of any modern PC games doing StarCraft-style spawn installation.
With PC at a lan party everyone has their own screen so far better multi-player gaming.
I thought games for Xbox platforms supported System Link play. Besides, buying one console and sharing a screen is a lot cheaper than buying two to four gaming PCs if you have an SO or kids. What advantage does a separate view offer for things like fighting games and cooperative platformers?
Multiple PCs and multiple copies (Score:2)
Family sharing isn't a great solution. A library can only be accessed once, so you if are playing a game on your main PC someone else spouse/kid can't be on another playing a game out of the same library. The only real solution is for non-online games which is to go into Steam offline mode and the games can be accessed on two different machines.
Sony's system on the PS4 is slightly better. On machine is defined as the account's "home" system. Any content is then accessible from any other account logged i
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...which still doesn't allow two different Steam logins to play the same game at the same time unless it is in both their game libraries.
I'm surprised there are console games that allow you to buy one copy and play on more than one console at the same time, as tepples seems to imply in the GP post.
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I'm surprised there are console games that allow you to buy one copy and play on more than one console at the same time
Three are plenty on Nintendo DS, such as Mario Kart DS and Tetris DS. I even know of one on Wii: Dr. Mario Online Rx. But on stationary consoles, same-screen play is far more common.
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Two on PS3/4 and Xbox360/One - the "master" console (which can be changed on either) which lets the game play offline, and the subsidiary one, which lets the game play while logged in online (though only one login per account).
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"There's no practical limit on the number of USB controllers you can attach to one PC"
Yes, there is. 127 per USB controller.
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That's very atypical, and still not practical. You are rather unlikely to try and actually use of all of those devices at once.
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For one thing, if you have a quality PlayStation to USB adapter, you don't really need NES or Super NES controllers because PlayStation 1 digital controllers work well for those platforms. For another, you can hang sets of devices on hubs and plug in your "camera rigs" hub, your "flight simulator joystick" hub, your "console controllers" hub, etc. when you need them. Keeping unused devices physically disconnected eliminates the CPU overhead and electric power consumption associated with polling them.
But
HTPC vicious cycle; button layouts (Score:2)
If you bought a PC game there's no reason you can't all play on the same PC.
One problem is that a lot of major-studio games designed around multiple controllers are released on one or more consoles and never make it to the PC until emulators catch up a decade or more later. This is more common in some genres than others. And a lot of games that do make it to PC have their split-screen mode cut out. The best guess I've seen as to the reason relates to what you suggest next:
Attach the PC gaming rig to the TV in the living room, add USB controllers
I'm under the impression that the number of end users are willing to do this is commercially insignificant [slashdot.org] comp
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I think Sony actually had a good idea with adding a chip to the early PS3's for backwards compatibility. I think that current-gen would do better if this concept continued.
And that was one of the reason the PS3 deluxe launch model cost $599! Don't you remember all the complaints about the price, and how they should have left backwards compatibility out because people buy a new console to play new games, not old ones? Saw that right here on Slashdot.
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I seriously doubt a greater conspiracy. I think it's a matter of releasing the game at the same time on all platforms, so first, they don't bother optimising the code for PC, second they don't want any striking differences between the platforms, because it will upset one group of fanboys who have invested their egos into that system.
Point being, it's better to just aim for the lowest common denominator. This was visible last generation, where at first there was some variation between X360 and PS4, until eve
Bad Ports (Score:5, Informative)
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The correct buzz term is "Early Access" and people pay lots of money for it...
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This is not new or unique. The PC is full of games that have ridiculously bad console-to-PC ports; With shitty controls, poor graphics, bad performance, and with absolutely no configurability.
Mmmyeah. I never got some of the mini-games, such as bowling, to work properly with keyboard and mouse in GTA IV for PC. Great quality assurance, LOL.
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And shitty PC to console ports, Half-Life 2, I'm looking at you.
Oh look, it's this thread again (Score:2)
the mac phenomenon (Score:2)
In the old days, we all had windows desktops which could be modded and used to play games in addition to it's usual uses.
Now all the kids (and myself) only own Mac laptops, and don't want to buy a windows desktop just to game.
So the easy choice is to drop $200 no a game console to augment the Mac.
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There are more and more games that run on Macs now, at least on Steam (I'm not a Steam lover, but if you've got a mac it's a good way to go).
Although if you've got a macbook pro, do you have money left over to buy a console?
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There are more and more games that run on Macs now, at least on Steam (I'm not a Steam lover, but if you've got a mac it's a good way to go).
Not really. There's a small subset of games, typically at much higher price points and late to market. I get 25 games for free each yr with XBOX LIVE GOLD, and pick up many AAA titles for $5 to $15 via on demand sales.
Although if you've got a macbook pro, do you have money left over to buy a console?
You can find an xbox360 for $100 on ebay/craigslist these days...or get a new one for $200. It's not just money though, there's no updating it, no viruses, no booting up and shutting down, no installing games, etc. It just works. And if it does break, just toss it or sell it on ebay and buy a
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In the old days, we all had windows desktops which could be modded and used to play games in addition to it's usual uses.
Now all the kids (and myself) only own Mac laptops, and don't want to buy a windows desktop just to game.
So the easy choice is to drop $200 no a game console to augment the Mac.
Let know know when you find a current gen console for $200.
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PS3s and XBoxes are still being made/sold, and still have games coming out for them, and that isn't changing any time soon.
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because the Xbone and PS4 are not next Gen consoles. They are at best last gen.5
I don't agree. The PS3 has a single core hyperthreaded CPU with 6 SPU's tacked on. The PS4 has an 8 core CPU
The PS3 has 256MB of RAM and 256MB of VRAM, the PS4 has 8 GB of unified ram, 16X as much.
The PS4 is a great a leap over the PS3 as the PS2 was over the PS1 or the PS3 over the PS2.
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Here's a current gen deal: xbox 360 for $150
Deal has expired; but they come and go.
http://slickdeals.net/f/555149... [slickdeals.net]
Oh, you mean the xbox one or PS4; well those are the latest gen, but xbox360/PS3 are still current gen.
In fact, they are much better consoles to own for now. More games. Cheap games. Used games available.
you can't just (Score:2)
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Copies per household (Score:2)
Really bad game to use for this comparison. (Score:2)
Titanfall, while not quite so bad, is another game that seems to demand more than it should from th
Re:Really bad game to use for this comparison. (Score:4, Insightful)
I really hope this isn't the start of a really bad trend of porting over crap, shoving it out the door, and telling the PC community to just throw more hardware at it.
What do you mean by start... This has been happening for years.
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I really hope this isn't the start of a really bad trend of porting over crap, shoving it out the door, and telling the PC community to just throw more hardware at it.
What do you mean by start... This has been happening for years.
Yea, but it really seems to be accelerating lately. I went for years on a 8800GT running most games without much issue. Granted, over the years I've had to dial back the settings as games got more resource hungry. Last year I picked up a 660Ti thinking it would last at least another few years. Already replaced it because it was already having trouble running games at high or ultra less than a year later (something that took a few years with the 8800).
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Maybe the PC version is actually the console version running within a custom virtual machine.
It's not but OK.
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shoving it out the door, and telling the PC community to just throw more hardware at it.
Hasn't that been standard procedure for ALL PC games, not just the ports? And now that we've got developers who were formerly x86-Windows only doing console games, they're doing the same thing to we console gamers.
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> Can anyone really tell much above 30 fps?
Oh please. There is a MAJOR difference between gaming at 30 Hz, 60 Hz, and 120 Hz. I play most of my games at 60 Hz and can tell _instantly_ when a game drops to 30 Hz.
This is NOT limited to games.
OWE my eyes @ 24 fps ! [cachefly.net]
Silky smooth @ 60 fps ! [cachefly.net]
If you don't have a 120 Hz monitor and haven't tried LightBoost [blurbusters.com] then you really don't even know what the hell you are talking about saying "30 fps is 'good enough'."
Some game devs are completely ignorant of the importance o
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Do you need that much FPS? Can anyone really tell much above 30fps? That used to be my baseline for knowing when I could finish tweaking the settings and start playing.
Absolutely. There is a clear difference between 30 and 60 fps when playing computer games.
Anything above 60 is gravy, but getting a game to stay at 60 is what you want, since it tends to be the refresh rate of the screen you're playing on.
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There's a significant issue specific to Titanfall, where the mouse sensitivity is linked to your framerate. If you experience slowdown within the game, a movement of the hand that normally moves the crosshairs 15degrees, may only move it 10 degrees.
It's like trying to aim with someone else's hand on a second mouse fighting back against your crosshairs. That kind of unpredictable mouse sensitivity variation also hits at the most inopportune times since a framerate drop is often concurrent with increased acti
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There's a significant issue specific to Titanfall, where the mouse sensitivity is linked to your framerate. If you experience slowdown within the game, a movement of the hand that normally moves the crosshairs 15degrees, may only move it 10 degrees.
It's like trying to aim with someone else's hand on a second mouse fighting back against your crosshairs. That kind of unpredictable mouse sensitivity variation also hits at the most inopportune times since a framerate drop is often concurrent with increased activity in the game.
Most games, even if you drop from 60 fps to 30fps, a hand motion that moves the crosshairs 15 degrees, will still move the crosshairs the same 15 degrees.
Yea they have been patching the game trying to fix those timing issues ever since they unlocked the framerate. Turns out pretty much everything in the game was clocked to framerate after they did whatever it was they did to uncap it. When they unlocked it people found they could run faster, shoot faster, etc if they were running on 144hz monitors. Totally not surprised mouse is affected by it as well. I really love that game and I'm disappointed in how the game has been handled by Respawn. I get they had s
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Ok, there's another game on the list to avoid (never heard of it, so that was easy).
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For comparison I can run The Grid 2, a graphics and physics intensive game, at 50-60 FPS at 4K* , but I can't get consistently above 50fps, and get drops into the 20's in Watch_Dogs running it at 1080p.
*on a Samsung U28D
This is all moot. (Score:2)
The game is rubbish, so who cares which hardware it runs best on?!
Slashdot degrades further and further (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention the hilarity of this all centering around "Watch_Dogs", a game that is a textbook example of publisher bait-and-switch and making promises that are never delivered upon. Ubisoft is the Comcast of gaming.
This isn't even my opinion, this stuff is in wide discussion anywhere on the internet that cares about gaming in-general.
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But it's true, right? If a cheap Dell off-the-shelf computer was far better than the current generation, that would definitely show how terrible the current consoles are. Instead, you need to spend maybe $800 minimum, you probably want to build the computer yourself and therefor need to have the time and the knowledge to build the computer yourself and then deal with any potential issues...
It's not really a story that you can do better than a console if you're willing to put in a larger amount of money, t
This ignores the fact... (Score:3)
that the game was cripple... would only people with high end hardware notice? Perhaps... but so what? The PC is not the console. Its not a uniform one size fits all platform. You release your game with variable settings that end users can tweak to get the best performance for THEIR machine.
Its how its done. The engine makers build in the hooks to change graphics settings dynamically on the fly with no trouble for a reason.
Just offer it and move on.
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But then you won't buy Watch Dogs HD on Steam Sale 4 years from now...
A 7950 cost 149$ (Score:4, Informative)
and has been in my box for over a year
obvious troll story
Surprising results? (Score:2)
Surprising results would be Ubisoft making a PC port that's stable and efficient right out of the gate and doesn't attack its customers with onerous DRM. The headline almost reads like an Onion article.
$250 from 4 years ago is fine (Score:2)
I bought my GPU for 250 dollars 4 years ago and it still runs all games on high settings.
The end-all logic (Score:2)
whole article is misleading and pointless (Score:2)
This whole article is misleading and pointless, as it has been discovered (and confirmed by UbiSoft themselves) that UbiSoft INTENTIONALLY crippled the graphics of PC versions (only) of WatchDogs.
http://www.maximumpc.com/ubiso... [maximumpc.com]
Assuming the asshat game developer didn't intentionally cripple it, top end PC graphics will always be capable of more/better performance than consoles. Its just common sense, not least because a top-end GPU card alone costs significantly more than an entire console.
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I'm just saying. Everything we know points to it being deliberately handicapped. The game actually runs better when you enable the settings that made it look gorgeous at E3. It runs better with better graphical fidelity.
The only excuse for disabling that is intentional malice or extreme incompetence. Ubisoft has a history of either of those in regards to PC gamers. If it were an isolated event, I'd go with incompetence, but this is no longer coincidence. I'm pretty sure it's malice due to it's repetition. l
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I'm just saying. Everything we know points to it being deliberately handicapped. The game actually runs better when you enable the settings that made it look gorgeous at E3. It runs better with better graphical fidelity.
The only excuse for disabling that is intentional malice or extreme incompetence. Ubisoft has a history of either of those in regards to PC gamers. If it were an isolated event, I'd go with incompetence, but this is no longer coincidence. I'm pretty sure it's malice due to it's repetition. l
It's PC so they get to use the 'ensuring optimum quality for all users' line as cover for the bullshots.
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I'm just saying. Everything we know points to it being deliberately handicapped. The game actually runs better when you enable the settings that made it look gorgeous at E3. It runs better with better graphical fidelity.
... if you never leave a small area, so that everything is full cached. Otherwise, you get significant stuttering. Look at any of the threads on the "mod" that enabled the settings - even as people praise it, they acknowledge that frame rates drop to 30 fps maximum with bursts of less than that vs. 60 fps without the "mod".
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http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=390114
I don't own it yet, waiting for it to go on sale, but I read about this from one of IceHancers recent posts.
I can't vouch for them, but perhaps they will be a good place to start.
It looks interesting, but not compelling enough to pay in at full price.
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..but the allegations were true and since it's ubi we're talking about they're probably molesting kids to.
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Going by what modders are pulling out of the game [guru3d.com] it does appear that it is true.
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Going by what modders are pulling out of the game [guru3d.com] it does appear that it is true.
Those modders are praising the wonderful graphics they get with the enabled settings, while admitting that they get stuttering and frame rates below 30 fps. Doesn't sound like Ubisoft "handicapped" the graphics to me, so much as fixed the performance issues.
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Going by what modders are pulling out of the game [guru3d.com] it does appear that it is true.
Those modders are praising the wonderful graphics they get with the enabled settings, while admitting that they get stuttering and frame rates below 30 fps. Doesn't sound like Ubisoft "handicapped" the graphics to me, so much as fixed the performance issues.
I've run the game with and without the mods and if anything it improved stuttering and barely impacted my frame rates. Other gamers are reporting the same experience.
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"Get" stuttering? The mod actually managed to REMOVE stuttering from the original game.
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Actually - not so much "modders" as "tweakers". Back in the day, it was editing an .ini file, and what they do is nothing else. They don't add external shaders, they don't add or replace any content, they just enable content that is there, in game, disabled by settings. The only reason this is done through mods and not plain config file edit is that the config file is buried within proprietary archive of the game, and can be modified only through a mod.
Re: (Score:2)
" a pc couldnt make halo look as delicious"
What? The XBox used a modified GeForce 3.
Just after Halo was released in November 2001, the GeForce 4 came out.
The GeForce 4Ti series ran rings around the Xbox's modified GeForce 3.