Madden 08 - Frame Rate Treatment

*Here's what the article says for som of you who have troubles with link*

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3160709

Deflated Pigskin: PS3's Football Troubles

How Madden, All-Pro and NCAA ain't looking so good on PS3.

They may call baseball America's pastime, but in the world of videogames, that honor easily belongs to football. No other sport has racked up software sales quite like the pigskin offerings, and no other sport has been so vital to the success (PlayStation 2 having Madden since Day 1) and failure (Dreamcast never got it) of hardware. The importance of this genre is just as relevant today, yet it seems Sony's console ain't sittin' so pretty this time around.

We have confirmed the Xbox 360 versions of Madden NFL 08 (August), All-Pro Football 2K8 (July), and NCAA Football 08 (July) will run at 60 frames per second, whereas the PS3 editions are locked at just 30fps. In the simplest of terms, this means that the 360 versions will run smoother and faster, and you'll have an easier time noticing subtle animations.

While we haven't had the opportunity to see the difference with EA's titles (the publisher hasn't sent us PS3 builds of either), All-Pro Football 2K8 definitely runs better on Xbox 360.

Now, you'd think Sony would be doing everything in its power to make sure these system sellers are par with -- or better -- than Microsoft's version. That's not the case, as Sony seems to have a "hey, we can do it -- why can't you?" attitude. "We have already proven that sports titles can run on the PlayStation 3 at true HD with 1080p output with NBA 07," says Dave Karraker, Sony CEA's senior director of corporate communications. "If you have questions about specific third-party games, you should speak to those publishers."

OK, we will. After seeing Sony's response, Todd Sitrin, EA's vice president of marketing sports branding, replied:

"We want to make sure that we give the best experience we can on each platform. In designing a game, there are all sorts of tradeoffs that include frame rate, visuals, features, AI, etc. Football is an extremely challenging sport to replicate because of the number of people on the field, their interaction, and the scope of the environments. As you can see, every company making a football game this year made a decision that the best experience for the Xbox 360 included 60fps whereas the best experience for the PS3 was 30fps. We certainly believe that both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are our football products are outstanding experiences and recommend that each gamer look at the entire experience, not just one aspect. We think they'll be very happy no matter which version of the game they play."

Unfortunately, the folks at 2K Sports refused to comment.

Aside from the simple fact that this puts the PS3 at a disadvantage (again), this situation (and Sony's response to it) raises all kinds of questions: is Sony's console really that much more difficult to develop for? What is Sony doing to educate its third parties on PS3 development? And after Karraker's comment, do they even care to help? A few weeks ago, Karraker tackled the subject on Sony's PlayStation blog:

"If your game starts on Xbox 360 you will have to re-engineer aspects of the game to run properly on PS3. This means additional effort. Some developers have been complaining about this but I don't believe we can solve that. Xbox 360 is a different machine with good, but lower powered hardware in a different architecture. Developers have to view them as two different machines not as a common platform."

It's worth pointing out that EA's been working on Xbox 360 hardware a full year longer than PS3. With Madden, it's almost understandable, but 2K is having the same issues with All-Pro Football 2K8, a game built from the ground up to be released on both platforms.

With this now in mind, does this change which version you're going to buy?

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Why is it that PS3 gets 30fps, that sucks because the PS3 is a very good system atleast they could have done it vice versa or the same, these developers are lame, seriously. What do you guys think?

if u got both systems,like me, why in the world would u get ps3 over xbox.cLAssic_BLUE

becuase one system dies out pretty regularly and there are thousands of complains about that.

The human eye cant really notice the difference so ignore this and enjoy. haseeb_1989

Hah, if you can't see the difference between 30fps and 60, your eyes aren't so great. No offense but honestly. Put on a pc game, and get something like fraps to see the framerate of it. 60 is more faster and smooth than 30.

[QUOTE="haseeb_1989"]The human eye cant really notice the difference so ignore this and enjoy. hazuki

Hah, if you can't see the difference between 30fps and 60, your eyes aren't so great. No offense but honestly. Put on a pc game, and get something like fraps to see the framerate of it. 60 is more faster and smooth than 30.

What i really mean is that most of us cant really notice the difference specially me without my glasses i accedently thaught that a girl teacher was a guy.

[QUOTE="haseeb_1989"]The human eye cant really notice the difference so ignore this and enjoy. hazuki

Hah, if you can't see the difference between 30fps and 60, your eyes aren't so great. No offense but honestly. Put on a pc game, and get something like fraps to see the framerate of it. 60 is more faster and smooth than 30.

Yeah, I still don't see how people continue to say that. It's exteremly easy to tell the difference between 30 and 60 with live 3D, especially without true motion like real video recordings at 24fps. Maybe it's because SD TVs have been the staple for console gamers that only do 30fps, while us PC gamers have been having to deal with progressive displays that can actually show higher than 30fps, which is really really needed for FPS with fast mouse movement. Atleast with HD gaming today if the game is limited to 30fps, the motion blur they can do now helps a bit.

[QUOTE="hazuki"]

[QUOTE="haseeb_1989"]The human eye cant really notice the difference so ignore this and enjoy. haseeb_1989

Hah, if you can't see the difference between 30fps and 60, your eyes aren't so great. No offense but honestly. Put on a pc game, and get something like fraps to see the framerate of it. 60 is more faster and smooth than 30.

What i really mean is that most of us cant really notice the difference specially me without my glasses i accedently thaught that a girl teacher was a guy.

This is more about motion than detail. In real life if you moved your hand across your face fast it would be a smooth blurring motion. Games don't have motion blur, and at 30fps, something that moves real fast will seem staggered or slow frame rate. To picture this, imagine if you had a strobe light flashing as you moved your hand back and forth, the hand would appear to be in slow motion since you'd only see it when a flash occurs, no blur in between. The faster the flashing, the more instances you get to see your hand, thus the smoother the motion seems. So with gaming, 60fps is a sweet spot for smooth motion in a fast paced game. 30fps can get a little clunky.

if u got both systems,like me, why in the world would u get ps3 over xbox.cLAssic_BLUE

That's a easy one, because i'v been a sony console owner since the 1st playstation & sony always satisfied me gaming-wise & I have a friend next door with a 360, 360 is a good system but my preference will always be playstation & as of for madden, even tho it's 30fps i dont think it's going to be bad as we think plus with 360 they have 2 maddens that was 30fps 06 & 07 and it been out for a year, so I guarentee madden 09 will have better framerates, just that developers i guess are still trying to learn more complex info about the hardware on the PS3.

[QUOTE="haseeb_1989"][QUOTE="hazuki"]

[QUOTE="haseeb_1989"]The human eye cant really notice the difference so ignore this and enjoy. TimothyB

Hah, if you can't see the difference between 30fps and 60, your eyes aren't so great. No offense but honestly. Put on a pc game, and get something like fraps to see the framerate of it. 60 is more faster and smooth than 30.

What i really mean is that most of us cant really notice the difference specially me without my glasses i accedently thaught that a girl teacher was a guy.

This is more about motion than detail. In real life if you moved your hand across your face fast it would be a smooth blurring motion. Games don't have motion blur, and at 30fps, something that moves real fast will seem staggered or slow frame rate. To picture this, imagine if you had a strobe light flashing as you moved your hand back and forth, the hand would appear to be in slow motion since you'd only see it when a flash occurs, no blur in between. The faster the flashing, the more instances you get to see your hand, thus the smoother the motion seems. So with gaming, 60fps is a sweet spot for smooth motion in a fast paced game. 30fps can get a little clunky.

Thats true but my real question is the fps depends on a lot of factors such as the ai and the amount of objects on the screen why hasent ea been able easily do this all on the cell i think sony needs to help developers out more ps i cant wait untill ibm releases the new cell developement kit it might help out developers just a bit.

Why can't this be one of those false news articles? Talk about a downer...

Made this real quick animation with a gif to prove a difference between framerates.

Sadly, thanks to gif options, the frames show for 0.02 seconds, meaning about 50fps. Only other option was 100fps.

Roughly:

TOP SQUARE 50FPS

BOTTOM SQUARE 25FPS (kind of like film motion fps)

BONUS, BOTTOM SQUARE HAS FAKE MOTION BLUR:

So you notice the 25fps square seems to be slow and stuttery, but with motion blur the 25fps becomes a lot more smooth. Video games to all have motion blur to make 30fps appear smooth when fast motion happens.

Made this real quick animation with a gif to prove a difference between framerates.

Sadly, thanks to gif options, the frames show for 0.02 seconds, meaning about 50fps. Only other option was 100fps.

Roughly:

TOP SQUARE 50FPS

BOTTOM SQUARE 25FPS (kind of like film motion fps)

BONUS, BOTTOM SQUARE HAS FAKE MOTION BLUR:

So you notice the 25fps square seems to be slow and stuttery, but with motion blur the 25fps becomes a lot more smooth. Video games to all have motion blur to make 30fps appear smooth when fast motion happens.

TimothyB

We are talking about 30fps vs 60fps. Not 25fps vs 30.

[QUOTE="TimothyB"]

Made this real quick animation with a gif to prove a difference between framerates.

Sadly, thanks to gif options, the frames show for 0.02 seconds, meaning about 50fps. Only other option was 100fps.

Roughly:

TOP SQUARE 50FPS

BOTTOM SQUARE 25FPS (kind of like film motion fps)

BONUS, BOTTOM SQUARE HAS FAKE MOTION BLUR:

So you notice the 25fps square seems to be slow and stuttery, but with motion blur the 25fps becomes a lot more smooth. Video games to all have motion blur to make 30fps appear smooth when fast motion happens.

sm66612

We are talking about 30fps vs 60fps. Not 25fps vs 30.

Didn't you read my post, sadly this is 50fps vs 25, not 25 vs 30. Due to the limitation of the gif options I could only set each frame time to 0.02 second. I was trying to do 60fps vs 30fps, which would need to be 0.016 seconds per frame, but it auto rounds off to 0.02, thus I could only do 50fps, which translates to 25fps for the bottom square. It's still a good demonstration as 5 more fps on the bottom square wasn't going to change much. I was only trying to show you can tell the difference between 30 and 60.

While this is 25 vs 50, film is 24fps and it appears smooth because of motion blur, so people assume 30 in a game would be impossible to tell apart anything higher, but obviously with no motion blur it's no where near the smooth motion you'd think it would be.

Oh noes!! Teh Ps3 will loose!!!

I still can't understand all these doom and gloom articles. I mean how much is M$ paying these people to do this. Why the hell are people even complaining? This is EA we're talking about. I'm sure they got a fat paycheck just for this kind of thing. There's no excuse for the PS3 version to be running at a slower frame rate than the 360 version.

Lucky for me I don't like football games.

We want to make sure that we give the best experience we can on each platform. In designing a game, there are all sorts of tradeoffs that include frame rate, visuals, features, AI, etc. Football is an extremely challenging sport to replicate because of the number of people on the field, their interaction, and the scope of the environments. As you can see, every company making a football game this year made a decision that the best experience for the Xbox 360 included 60fps whereas the best experience for the PS3 was 30fps. We certainly believe that both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are our football products are outstanding experiences and recommend that each gamer look at the entire experience, not just one aspect. We think they'll be very happy no matter which version of the game they play.Todd Sitrin, EA's vice president of marketing sports branding

The only reason you make tradeoffs is if the system can't handle it. If the PS3 is the most technologically superior system ever (as Sony has regularly claimed), this should not be an issue.

Shame on Sony for having their dev kits out late and "Playstation Edge" support out a year later than it should have been. Just pathetic.

The only reason you make tradeoffs is if the system can't handle it. If the PS3 is the most technologically superior system ever (as Sony has regularly claimed), this should not be an issue.

Shame on Sony for having their dev kits out late and "Playstation Edge" support out a year later than it should have been. Just pathetic.

mindworm22

how is that pathetic

The only reason you make tradeoffs is if the system can't handle it. If the PS3 is the most technologically superior system ever (as Sony has regularly claimed), this should not be an issue.

Shame on Sony for having their dev kits out late and "Playstation Edge" support out a year later than it should have been. Just pathetic.

mindworm22

So you decided not to take into consideration that its an architecture that is completely new compared to the 360s which was the run of the mill architecture already. The fact that PS Edge got out that quick was fairly remarkable I'd say. Cell programming is far from easy and there aren't many out there who have experience with it. The ps3 version will more than likely run just as smooth which is what people see.

Give me a break, are youpart of the team working on the dev kit's. No your not, I love these people that like totell Sony how they should be doing there jobs. These things aren't easy to make, they take time. Plus theres little things called bugs that can cause a product to go from ready to be shipped, to being delayed until those bugs are fixed. You need to take that into consideration too.

What the heck are you talking about, just because the Playstation Edge Dev Kits wasn't out as soon as thought it should have been doesn't mean that Sony's not supporting there product. Setbacks do happen, and unless you were in the inner circle of people who were working on the dev kit's how could you posibly know what was going on.

its no big deal. The first 2 Madden's for 360 were at 30 FPS and they palyed fine. Both will play the same and both will be great. As for 2K... idk whats up with them :PCutekitten6_18

yea at least EA commented about it.

Wow why do you guys care? It is the same game every year but with a graphic upgrade, bad music, and maybe a new type of addition if your lucky. So why do you keep buying the same game over and over?Vyse_Legends

You wouldnt understand, if you dont LOVE the sport..

american footballis a dumb game that only americans play soit hardly is a make or break game for a console! the most popular sport in the world is proper football, pro evolution and fifa probly out sell madden by tonsslikonebtz

Is it really necessary to bash a sport that you've never played before??

[QUOTE="slikonebtz"]american footballis a dumb game that only americans play soit hardly is a make or break game for a console! the most popular sport in the world is proper football, pro evolution and fifa probly out sell madden by tonsThe_Rick_14

Is it really necessary to bash a sport that you've never played before??

lol pwned

Ok, me and my friends were talking about this after we read the article, and this is the best analogy we could come up with:

The Xbox 360 is like a 350hp sports car. The PS3 is a 400hp sports car that is much more difficult to drive. The best driver in the world can go faster in the 400hp one that is hard to drive, but 90% of the rest of us can do better in the 350hp one.

Kinda like the developers now. If you can manage to take full advantage of the specs, the PS3 may be a bit better than the 360, but with games already having been developed for the PS3 for almost a year....it appears that it is going to be VERY difficult for devs to take full advantage of what the PS3 has to offer...at least for a while yet.

What's interesting is hearing Brian Intihar on the latest 1up your podcast on 1up.com talking how in the past Sony would do everything in there power to make sure that that particular years madden would look just as good if not better as the other version of that particular years madden. This year -- they're not.

Folks - don't just be lemmings. Sony is dropping the ball hardcore in some ways. Wake up. Just because we bought PS3s doesn't mean we have to follow what they say blindly and nod in agreement.

Sony can spout off all they want about having 1080p/60fps, but until it shows up consistently, it's bunk.

And EA, for that matter, can say that 30fps will play the same as 60fps, but unless you're a mindless lemming, you'll know otherwise.

As you can see, every company making a football game this year made a decision that the best experience for the Xbox 360 included 60fps whereas the best experience for the PS3 was 30fps.Todd Sitrin, EA's vice president of marketing sports branding

This would make sense if the PS3 version was in 1080p. Its pretty difficult to have a game run in true 1080p at 60 fps with so much stuff going on. Lets all remember that the 360 in incapable of outputting in TRUE 1080p.

[QUOTE="Vyse_Legends"]Wow why do you guys care? It is the same game every year but with a graphic upgrade, bad music, and maybe a new type of addition if your lucky. So why do you keep buying the same game over and over?Psmol200

You wouldnt understand, if you dont LOVE the sport..

if u got both systems,like me, why in the world would u get ps3 over xbox.cLAssic_BLUE

Agreed.

I own the PS360 and will now buy both EA games for the x360. I was going to buy the PS3 version of Madden08 until I read the news.

[QUOTE="Todd Sitrin, EA's vice president of marketing sports branding"]As you can see, every company making a football game this year made a decision that the best experience for the Xbox 360 included 60fps whereas the best experience for the PS3 was 30fps.needlesmcgirk

This would make sense if the PS3 version was in 1080p. Its pretty difficult to have a game run in true 1080p at 60 fps with so much stuff going on. Lets all remember that the 360 in incapable of outputting in TRUE 1080p.

Both versions are in 720p (like the last 2 Maddens), but the framerates are different. No version is 1080p native. And yes, the x360 is capable of 1080p native.

I don't have time to review the whole article. But is the 360 version 1080p at 60fps, or is it 720p only at 60fps. The PS3 is 30fps at 1080p I know for sure. And even if the 360 did 1080p at 60fps, my 360 has no HDMI and I have no way of doing 1080p on my tv besides HDMI. So the question is, which would look better on a 65inch 1080p tv, 1080p at 30fps or 720p at 60fps in my case.
TimothyB

You don't understand how HDTV works, when you say that the PS3 is 30fps at 1080p that is wrong, the p in 1080p means progressive, which means 60fps, the i in 1080i means interlace and that means 30fps. So if a game can only run at 30fps that means it cannout do 1080p