Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

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Zelda sold 10 million copies within the first three days. Consoles exist for having fun, playing a game without having to inspect every option.

Do you want better graphics, more frames, more control? Buy a PC. Make good games with good graphics is everything which matters.

Zelda is not available on PC (outside of emulation). Zelda would be more fun if it ran at a higher frame rate because it would be easier to control Link and fight enemies. It would be more fun it it ran at a higher resolution because you would see things more clearly without a lot of image noice.
 
But we're not talking about a single genre, we're talking about all types on games.

If the next Horizon games comes out and it's 30fps with no 60fps options but looks vastly superior to Forbidden West I don't think people will complain about the frame rate.

And yet plenty of people complained about the best looking games on PS4 running at 30 FPS. It's nothing new, and with more exposure to gamers, the desire for at the minimum a 60 FPS option only grows this generation. I think developers will be surprised at how many current gen gamers will be unhappy if there isnt' a performance mode.

Regards,
SB
 
Zelda sold 10 million copies within the first three days. Consoles exist for having fun, playing a game without having to inspect every option.

Do you want better graphics, more frames, more control? Buy a PC. Make good games with good graphics is everything which matters.

Perfect example of a lot of people unhappy that it only runs at 30 FPS but play it because they have absolutely no choice.

Well, some have no choice, some choose to buy the game (so they can't be accused of pirating) and then play it on PC via emulator so they can get higher than 30 FPS. :p

Regards,
SB
 
Zelda is not available on PC (outside of emulation). Zelda would be more fun if it ran at a higher frame rate because it would be easier to control Link and fight enemies. It would be more fun it it ran at a higher resolution because you would see things more clearly without a lot of image noice.
Yes, but it doesnt change anything. The Switch is a great console. One, maybe two settings, and you just play. Put the cartridge into the console, maybe download the latest Patch and you can play. Its all about convenience.
 
Yes, but it doesnt change anything. The Switch is a great console. One, maybe two settings, and you just play. Put the cartridge into the console, maybe download the latest Patch and you can play. Its all about convenience.
I don't get your point here. Do you mean that if something is convenient it can never be improved?
 
I don't get your point here. Do you mean that if something is convenient it can never be improved?

It's addressing your argument that Zelda would be 'more fun' if you could it at higher resolution and better frame rates. Yes, for you, and probably me - because I don't have a lifestyle where a portable gaming device would be a significant benefit, and I'm a nerd enough that I know how to configure emulators and have a certain tolerance for configuration time.

With 120+ million Switch's sold and 10 million Zelda copies in less than a week though, there are far more people who apparently don't have that tolerance for setup/education, or just appreciate the form factor. That portability and simplicity is part of the 'fun', hypothesizing how much more enjoyable a game would be on a different platform that doesn't meet those criteria doesn't really mean much.

A better potential data point, if it existed, to determine consumer preference of performance vs. aesthetics would be to see how many people run X game in performance vs. resolution mode. Too many different factors in comparing the acceptance of performance in a portable system to games on a 300+wt console or tower PC.
 
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About 60fps gaming being the new 30fps here I was obviously talking about home console gaming. Gamers playing on Switch are often casual and have others priorities.

They don't care if their screen is scratched by the dock, they don't care if they have more input latency with the default controller compared to home console controller and they don't care if their stick is permanently drifting, borderline unplayable, when playing Mario Kart. Ergo they clearly won't care of playing Fortnite or Zelda at 30fps and blurry 500p when moving around.

This is my experience of my friends / family owning Switches of course.
 
It's addressing your argument that Zelda would be 'more fun' if you could it at higher resolution and better frame rates. Yes, for you, and probably me - because I don't have a lifestyle where a portable gaming device would be a significant benefit, and I'm a nerd enough that I know how to configure emulators and have a certain tolerance for configuration time.

If Nintendo had a "Switch Pro" that could run Zelda at 60 fps and 1080p it would be more fun to play it on that device for all the reasons I enumerated. Anyone who could compare would make the same judgement.

Now, that is unfortunately not possible for the normal consumer. But if they would be able to try it they would feel the difference and enjoy the game more.
 
I don't get your point here. Do you mean that if something is convenient it can never be improved?
No, i mean that the Switch is a system without wait time, without GBs of patches. And combine this with games like Zelda you get a experience not possible on other plattforms.

Compare Zelda with Jedi Survivor. You have to download up to 150GB (takes hours...) and get a game which is basically a rail third person game. Look at the content created between Zelda and Jedi Survivor. Jedi Survivor looks great but as a game it hasnt evolved since 20 years.
 
No, I mean that the Switch is a system without wait time, without GBs of patches. And combine this with games like Zelda you get a experience not possible on other plattforms.

Didn't BoTW need numerous patches to fix it's god awful performance issues it launched with?
 
There was a patch at release. But i played 50hours and didnt encounter problems like in Jedi Survirvor on a 13600K and 4090 system...
 
There was a patch at release. But i played 50hours and didnt encounter problems like in Jedi Survirvor on a 13600K and 4090 system...

It had four game and performance fixing patches in the first 6-8 weeks of release.

So it wasn't as perfect as you implied.

I would have to re-watch the DF video but it was a bit if a mess at launch with it locking to 20fps in multiple places.
 
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totk is most likely memory-bandwidth (and in certain cases gpu) limited, so i doubt how much performance patch can do if they don't cut out those post processing effects.
if they could switch to adaptive vsync, will that make the frame pacing a bit smoothier (so not directly down to 20fps when drops happened)?
I'd also argue to give people the option to turn off fsr1.0. Not only this removes the oversharpening (or ringing artifacts) but could also improve the framerate as fsr1.0 is quite bandwidth heavy on a mobile chip.
Anyway so far the performance level is actually acceptable to me. Yes it drops, but you can kinda foresee the drop moment (crowd battle with 20 npc fighting each other, full screen transparency & etc) I feel this is a typical ps3-era performance.
Hope the next nintendo console will provide some sort of backwards compatibility and we can enjoy zelda and xenoblade titles at a flawless 30fps & max. dynamic res at least.
 
But we're not talking about a single genre, we're talking about all types on games.

If the next Horizon games comes out and it's 30fps with no 60fps options but looks vastly superior to Forbidden West I don't think people will complain about the frame rate.
Disagree. Anyone with an OLED TV (which is many people at this point) will complain, because 30fps on an OLED is painful.
 
That's a very generalised statement to make as you don't speak for everyone that owns an OLED.

What you should say is, you find 30fps on an OLED painful.
Okay? But you were the one who made a generalised statement first, by asserting that "people will not complain about the framerate". So which is it? :geek:

Maybe you should have said that you won't complain about the framerate.
 
Okay? But you were the one who made a generalised statement first, by asserting that "people will not complain about the framerate". So which is it? :geek:

Maybe you should have said that you won't complain about the framerate.

Well I won't be playing it on PS5, if it comes to PC I'll likely be complaining about:

  • Frame rate
  • Traversal stutters
  • Shader comp stutter
  • Bugs
  • VRAM usage
  • Glitches
  • Too many patches

:runaway: :ROFLMAO:
 
Well I won't be playing it on PS5, if it comes to PC I'll likely be complaining about:

  • Frame rate
  • Traversal stutters
  • Shader comp stutter
  • Bugs
  • VRAM usage
  • Glitches
  • Too many patches

:runaway: :ROFLMAO:
Jokes aside, I'll be very surprised if going forward, all Sony's games don't keep a performance mode. The PS5 has shown it has lots of headroom on Miles, GOW and HFW over and above 60fps. So all they need to do it raise the quality accordingly to leave PS4 behind, and get to 60. Job done. It's really just a decision to be made rather than a technical limit.
 
Jokes aside, I'll be very surprised if going forward, all Sony's games don't keep a performance mode. The PS5 has shown it has lots of headroom on Miles, GOW and HFW over and above 60fps. So all they need to do it raise the quality accordingly to leave PS4 behind, and get to 60. Job done. It's really just a decision to be made rather than a technical limit.

Sony first party also have a reputation for really pushing the visuals so if they want to continue to have that image they might very well go for 30fps.

I feel it will also depend on upscaling, it could be FSR2 quality mode at 30fps and FSR2 performance mode at 60fps (But using FSR performance mode at 30fps will give them hella lot of power for insane graphics)

Although I'm really shocked we've not seen an ML based upscaler on the consoles by now, especially the Series consoles.
 
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