John Carmack Insists New Consoles Will Run Games at 30fps

[SmokePants]

"It remains unclear whether Carmack's stance on next-gen consoles stems from disappointment in the rumored hardware specs or a belief that developers simply won't push the consoles to their respective limits."

It is neither. The next generation will be at 30fps for the same reason that this generation was: enhanced visuals are more marketable than enhanced framrate. The hardware will be capable of 60 and developers will push it just as hard as they always have, but most will not prioritize framerate over, say, lighting and shadows.

 

[Denamic]

I'm just wondering is the next gen consoles will support tessellation and/or physx.
Because that'd mean multiplatform games would start looking so much better on the PC.

 

[Lillowh]

For those who say they can't tell the difference between 30 fps and 60 fps,

I've yet to see any evidence that the difference in frames per second poses any symptoms other than psychological ones. (I'm telling you I can see the difference. I know its there! That's why I keep losing to you. No it's not that you're a better player, damnit!)

You actually can see the difference quite clearly side by side and it's really quite noticeable right away and bothersome to those who've become used to everything at 60 fps suddenly playing a game at 30. Your eyes cannot see the difference, but your brain can. IT makes a difference by increasing the fluidity of movements by a good amount.

Here's something to demonstrate the 30 vs 60 FPS thing. http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html
At the end of the day whether or not we need to have things at 60 fps on consoles is down to opinion. What's not down to opinion is the fact thatt there is a noticeable difference between 60 and 30 fps for the majority of people.

 

[Lucky Godzilla]

Excuse my ignorance, but don't many games now run at twice that? Whether or not that's a good thing is a matter of debate however.

Unless you are playing on PC (where your FPS is determined by hardware/settings) most big name console games these days run at 30 fps. The only series that has truly committed to 60 fps is CoD, and in order to do that it had to sacrifice a fair amount of visual fidelity when compared to other games due to the obvious fact that it must render twice as many frames every second than say BF3. The only other future console game I know of that is running at 60 fps is mgs rising.
I have to agree with Carmack however, despite (in my opinion) the superior gameplay of 60fps, many console gamers seem to choose graphical fidelity over a higher frame rate, and to be fair as long as the frame rate remains constant the game is completely playable. Also, if I may be so bold to make my own prediction, I don't see many "next gen" games running at 1080p either.

Ok, I was sure about that.
As for my personal opinion, well it's the same as my opinion regarding HD, in that I have to ask, does it really affect the gameplay or your ability to have fun playing the game? And if it does, how shallow are you (I mean "you" generically, not "you" specifically)?

I feel as if you might have misinterpreted my prediction. Resolution only is an issue if you're talking sub-HD, or have your face pressed up against a monitor where you can actually see the individual pixels. Sitting on my couch, I don't give a damn if my 360 is outputting 720 or 1080. A lot of people think that the next gen will output in 1080p, which I think is false. Most Devs seem to value the extra juice for fidelity than for a sharper resolution.

 

[Bad Jim]

if I may be so bold to make my own prediction, I don't see many "next gen" games running at 1080p either.

I think 1080p is plausible. It makes a fairly noticeably improvement, probably more of an improvement than adding polygons or improving the lighting model. I'd say that antialiasing is more important, but antialiasing needs surprisingly little GPU power, so we may get both.

 

[Doom972]

Excuse my ignorance, but don't many games now run at twice that? Whether or not that's a good thing is a matter of debate however.

Many games do, but those that have huge environments or make extensive use of foliage or other demanding effects get a 30 FPS lock on consoles. On a good (not top end) PC, you can still get many games to run at 60 FPS and beyond.

Personally, I like my games at 40 FPS minimum, unless it's a turn-based game. I can see why it doesn't make much difference to console gamers, since most of them seem to favor plugging their console of choice to a TV across the room.

It's not really a matter of debate whether highter FPS is good for gaming since even if you don't like seeing smoother movement, higher FPS makes the game feel more responsive and dynamic, which is always considered a plus in a video game.

 

[Lucky Godzilla]

if I may be so bold to make my own prediction, I don't see many "next gen" games running at 1080p either.

I think 1080p is plausible. It makes a fairly noticeably improvement, probably more of an improvement than adding polygons or improving the lighting model. I'd say that antialiasing is more important, but antialiasing needs surprisingly little GPU power, so we may get both.

The thing is, most devs tend to go for the complexity of their engine over the sharpness of their resolution. Take BF3 as an example, DICE could not obtain a consistant framerate. So faced between toning down the graphics or lowering the resolution they chose the latter. So whenever you play BF3 on 360 or PS3, you aren't even playing at 720p.

 

[Baldr]

Really depends on how cheap your TV is. Most 60hz do basic interpolation on 30p to reach that refresh rate, so even of a game was running at 60fps, it would look very similar to 30fps.

Better manufactured HDTV especially with 120hz could do a little better, but that is not what is in the homes of most people. Getting a game to run 60fps on a console would be a waste of resources.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Excuse my ignorance, but don't many games now run at twice that? Whether or not that's a good thing is a matter of debate however.

Unless you are playing on PC (where your FPS is determined by hardware/settings) most big name console games these days run at 30 fps. The only series that has truly committed to 60 fps is CoD, and in order to do that it had to sacrifice a fair amount of visual fidelity when compared to other games due to the obvious fact that it must render twice as many frames every second than say BF3. The only other future console game I know of that is running at 60 fps is mgs rising.
I have to agree with Carmack however, despite (in my opinion) the superior gameplay of 60fps, many console gamers seem to choose graphical fidelity over a higher frame rate, and to be fair as long as the frame rate remains constant the game is completely playable. Also, if I may be so bold to make my own prediction, I don't see many "next gen" games running at 1080p either.

Ok, I was sure about that.
As for my personal opinion, well it's the same as my opinion regarding HD, in that I have to ask, does it really affect the gameplay or your ability to have fun playing the game? And if it does, how shallow are you (I mean "you" generically, not "you" specifically)?

I feel as if you might have misinterpreted my prediction. Resolution only is an issue if you're talking sub-HD, or have your face pressed up against a monitor where you can actually see the individual pixels. Sitting on my couch, I don't give a damn if my 360 is outputting 720 or 1080. A lot of people think that the next gen will output in 1080p, which I think is false. Most Devs seem to value the extra juice for fidelity than for a sharper resolution.

Ok, I was still mostly talking about the 60 FPS thing, but yeah that too.

Excuse my ignorance, but don't many games now run at twice that? Whether or not that's a good thing is a matter of debate however.

Many games do, but those that have huge environments or make extensive use of foliage or other demanding effects get a 30 FPS lock on consoles. On a good (not top end) PC, you can still get many games to run at 60 FPS and beyond.

Personally, I like my games at 40 FPS minimum, unless it's a turn-based game. I can see why it doesn't make much difference to console gamers, since most of them seem to favor plugging their console of choice to a TV across the room.

It's not really a matter of debate whether highter FPS is good for gaming since even if you don't like seeing smoother movement, higher FPS makes the game feel more responsive and dynamic, which is always considered a plus in a video game.

Meh, makes little difference to me. After all some of the games I've gotten the most absorbed in were sprite based and had turn based combat so make of that what you will.

 

[Bad Jim]

The thing is, most devs tend to go for the complexity of their engine over the sharpness of their resolution. Take BF3 as an example, DICE could not obtain a consistant framerate. So faced between toning down the graphics or lowering the resolution they chose the latter. So whenever you play BF3 on 360 or PS3, you aren't even playing at 720p.

That might be a case of not budgeting their detail properly. If you find out, as the project comes together, that you can't maintain a good framerate, it's rather expensive to tweak all the assets but very cheap to change the resolution. It might not deliver the best result, but it's the most cost effective way to deliver a reasonable result.

It's really a question of balance. Resolution without detail wastes rendering time because a crude model at 1080p is still just a crude model. But detail without resolution is also a waste, because you won't be able to see the extra detail. In general, more powerful consoles will want to use higher resolutions to do justice to their extra detail.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

The headline is misleading to the context. He seems to mean that 30fps will be the standard for most games, he's not saying they CAN'T run 60 just that they won't bother trying to push the standard to that because it won't see the benefit.

 

[Gammayun]

I'm fine with that, if it means more actual content and things able to happen in the game world.

In Driver San Francisco, singleplayer supposedly runs at 60, multiplayer at 30. Switching to multiplayer you notice the change...

...for about three seconds. After that it's business as usual, and the FPS becomes irrelevant.

Wait the Driver SF multi ran at 30 fps! Well I guess I don't care about fps either as it turns out.

 

[pilouuuu]

Carmack got the respect I lost for him after Rage with this comments. It should have been a PC game first and foremost. If he wants to be a cool guy again in my book, he has to make a decent Doom 4 and if the next-gen consoles suck which I don't really think, then just make it for PC and whatever Valve-hardware turns out to be.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm actually more concerned about the game content devs ditch in order to keep 60 fps- Driver was certainly guilty of that. Technology limitations aside, if you decide right at the start to cap your game at 30 fps, you have a lot more breathing space for your game to do/display/calculate stuff before you start seeing hits to the frame count. I see 60fps as a sort of instant barrier on some features devs would probably like to be able to put in to their games.

Pretty much the same by way of example. We aren't seeing that, generally speaking.

 

[J Tyran]

This is all conjecture anyway until sony and microsoft actually release specs for their new consoles,

Devs like Carmack will almost certainly know the console specs, they will have had the console development kits for a while now. The Sony "Orbis" (PS4) for example is now in its third iteration. They usually start off like a graphics card or other internal PC component and then end up as a nondescript looking PC.

When devs start saying stuff about the next console gen its worth listening, they cannot say much because of NDAs but they can let some things slip.

 

[Joccaren]

I'm a little confused. We can run games at 60 FPS on consoles now right? With some graphics hits and tweaking. I'm pretty sure Dantes Inferno is 60 FPS. So is he saying that the games graphics are going to increase to a point where consoles still can't handle higher frame rates? Are they going to look better enough that it's still worth than over 60 FPS?

EDIT: Accidentally wrote 30 instead of 60. Now corrected

You can run games at 60 FPS on some consoles, but you won't because there is more focus on how the games look rather than the smoothness of play. As such, very few games run on the 360 or PS3 at 60FPS, much like how few games run at 1080p.
As for game graphics are GOING to increase... They already have. Look at the PC, we have graphics that bring dual card rigs to their knees, and each of those cards is many times more powerful than what is in a current gen console. The graphics are already there, its just that consoles might finally be able to utilise them to a bit of a better extent, though they still won't manage to meet today's PC graphics in terms of fidelity.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Some games hit 60FPS every generation, but frame-rates and resolutions drop as graphics get more demanding. The reason PCs maintain 60PS at high resolutions is because their hardware advances with the graphics. Consoles don't.

30FPS is almost always fine. I much prefer 60, but 30 isn't an issue for me. I've met a few people who don't like 60FPS actually.

 

[Grabehn]

I'd like to read what he's responding to, cuz without that I just can't tell if he's saying this as a good or bad thing. I just can't seem to figure out what's unfortunate about consoles running games at 30fps.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Well, that's too bad. I kind of liked that guy... one more person that goes on my list of people with their head up their ass over minor points.

 

[madster11]

Unfortunately i believe him, too. Devs will focus on how many moving scraps of cloth they can fit onto the screen at one time so they can make trailers to show off the graphics, and then lock it at 30FPS with microstuttering making it feel like shit.

We need 60FPS @ 4K for the next generation of consoles to be relevant in 3-4 years, and judging by the way things are going that would be 1/2 their lifespan.