Story Highlights
- Current-gen consoles still have the potential to run games at 60 FPS, albeit by making some sacrifices.
- Not every gamer desires visual fidelity; some just want to experience gameplay at a smooth framerate.
- Sony’s first-party lineup proves that the PS5 is strong enough to provide both visuals and performance.
Current-gen consoles, including the PS5 and Xbox Series X, are still more than powerful enough to run games at 60 FPS; however, this comes at the cost of the game’s visual quality. In my opinion, gamers should always have the option of running games at lower settings to achieve better performance, like how it’s done on PC. Instead, studios are now shifting toward providing only a quality mode on these consoles, which is locked to 30 FPS.
Most PS5 players say 60fps is a must, new poll reveals 👀
See more: https://t.co/9mx7gDkTHL pic.twitter.com/UUUsCA2FwU
— Hunter 🎮 (@NextGenPlayer) April 9, 2024
Sony’s First Party Lineup
The existence of PlayStation’s first-party games is a testament to the industry that the PS5 can provide great performance at high visual fidelity. Just look at Spider-Man 2, for example. Its performance mode not only runs at 4K upscaled but also features Ray Tracing. This game generally looks visually pleasing, and it does so whilst maintaining a constant 60FPS, which can be further increased if you have VRR.
PlayStation studios….I have been vastly under appreciative for all the hard work you all do when it comes to giving gamers options. For that, I apologize. Please keep it up 🙏🏾 💙 #PS5 pic.twitter.com/CvDB85CbW7
— Morghan Kimes (Your favorite Xbox Ambassador💚) (@ChillBandit) April 4, 2024
Horizon Forbidden West is another great example, as it features some of the best visuals this generation for an open-world title and manages to provide a consistent performance mode with the said visuals. Sony’s first-party games aren’t even sacrificing visual fidelity to provide a solid framerate. It all comes down to great optimization, but even if a studio cannot do that, at least provide a performance by lowering the overall settings.
Stellar Blade is an upcoming PS5 exclusive title that gives players the freedom to choose between three different graphical modes. Its performance mode also comes with minimal drawbacks. By giving us players a choice, PS5 games fail to disappoint. I know there are gamers who will always prefer fidelity, but the community that wants better performance at the cost of anything should not be ignored.
Remedy’s Graphical Leap And Optimization
Alan Wake 2 is considered to be the best showcase of ray tracing technology next to Cyberpunk 2077. Now, implementing ray tracing can really tank performance, especially on the PS5 and Xbox Series X. I was almost convinced that this game would launch with a 30 FPS quality mode after looking at the mind-blowing visuals in the reveal trailers.
I’m glad to say that Alan Wake 2 will have a Performance mode on PS5 and Xbox Series X. The game has been built from the beginning as a 30fps experience focusing on visuals and ambiance, but somehow we have managed to include a solid Performance mode. We’ll talk details later.
— Thomas Puha (@RiotRMD) September 27, 2023
Lo and behold, Remedy decided to show us once again that they care about their audience. The developers optimized their title and added a performance mode at the last minute before release, giving us options yet again. If you want to witness next-gen visuals, sure, you can do that; just select the quality mode. But if you’re ok with a softer image and downgraded resolution for better performance, then you’ll get that, too.
Square Enix Makes Sacrifices But Gives Options
Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth are Square Enix’s two latest blockbuster releases, and both are currently exclusive to the PS5. I love how both of these games come with a performance mode that stays locked at 60FPS during battle, which elevates the gameplay even further. However, the visuals suffer, and they suffer a lot to provide a consistent framerate.
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Here in, lies a choice for console gamers. If you want the best image quality, then the developers have given you a quality mode locked at 30FPS. However, if you want to play the games with a butter smooth gameplay experience, then you’ll have to tolerate blurry visuals and a lower resolution.
I’m not promoting bad optimization here since both of these games would look better if the performance mode was given more time in the oven but I’m appreciating the fact that at least were given a choice!
Dragon’s Dogma 2’s Horrible Launch
Capcom is a studio that I have always admired for its amazingly optimized games. The RE engine that the studio has crafted provided great visuals with amazing performance even on the last gen hardware. But the studio dropped the ball with the launch of Dragon’s Dogma 2, which suffers from FPS drops and completely lacks a performance mode.
The issues are not only visible on consoles but on PC as well, which led to the game’s rating dropping to Mostly Negative on Steam. However, my main focus is the console version where Capcom has, for some reason, decided to lock this game to 4K and has turned on Ray Tracing by default, which cannot be tweaked.
This leads to performance issues even which could’ve been easily evaded, had the settings been tuned down a bit. My claim is further supported by the fact that in a recent update, players can now turn off ray tracing which leads to a huge improvement in the FPS, even though they aren’t yet.
However, the studio is moving in the right direction, and I believe that a 60 FPS patch will come out in the future, as it did for A Plague Tale: Requiem. The whole point of my article is to show a simple fact that console gamers should always get a choice, especially now, as the current-gen consoles are really strong. Developers really need to provide separate graphics and performance modes to satisfy both sides of the coin.
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