Is this console generation plagued with frame rate issues?

Seems like every AAA budget game that is coming out, that is not a Remaster (even these have issues) or a Cross-Gen game, is having frame rate issues. They can't keep a steady 30fps or 60fps for long.

Developers are now saying that they are "targeting" a specific frame rate instead of confidentially saying that the game will have a specific frame rate.

Maybe my memory isn't serving me right but I don't remember this being a big problem last generation, other then a "sh*t" port on one console compared to the other.

Are current-gen games being pushed too far?

Not sure it's a problem that's in plague proportions, but yeah there definitely have been a few. But we're still quite early into this gen so maybe we can put it down to developers still getting to grips with the new hardware? Not sure.

^ This, if you weren't willing to spend extra few hundred dollars more on it..then you don't have right to complain, you get what you paid for...can't be expecting company to take a big hit for you just so you can have your proper framerates. :P

I cant tell, from what i play, 3DS, Wii U, and PC i dont ever experience it, so im not sure how its affecting the games.

I don't really ever see many if anyone at all complaining about framerate on consoles. Not console gamers anyway...maybe hermits that either are jaded or hermits who don't even own a console and just wannt bash them.

I for one have played many games on the PS4 that were 30fps and yet I've enjoyed almost all of them. The ones I haven't enjoyed were due to the awful game itself....not the framerate.

@ShadowDeathX: There's a reason for that: PS3 and XB360 was at least on par to a high end pc that was released on the same year while PS4 and XB1 was a bit below an entry level pc that was released on the same year.

And games these days are really demanding on both CPU and GPU.

your memory is definitely fucked up since the last generation has arguably the biggest amount of games with awful frame-rate compared to any other gen, especially on PS3. Games like the Soul series, Mass Effect series, Deus Ex, Elder Scrolls, Dragon's Dogma, Rainbow Six, The Last of Us, etc. had some of the most godawful frame-rates ever seen, and in the case of the Souls series it even translated to the PC version of the first Dark Souls even after using the fan made fix.

Thus far this gen has provided the most consistent frame-rates ever on a console. Just take a look at DF's analyses. Last gen games with consistent 30fps could be counted on one hand, games with completely locked frame-rate like Uncharted's are very and extremely rare.

Yeah consoles kinda sucking

I know not all Xbone games are completely free from it but it usually happens with PS4 games, be it multiplats or exclusives that are blindly pushing for 1080p and having hiccups as a result. Xbone is much better scaled according to its capabilities, even if they're just a bit lower.

it was worse last gen

You should've tried owning a Ps3 last gen.

Exactly

I guarantee you there are just as many if not more 60fps games on PS4 at this point then there was on PS3.

Everyone has been saying how weak consoles are this gen.

Both frame rate issues and and resolution issues.

It's sad most games on all current gen consoles struggle to run in 1080P and 60FPS unless it looks like a last gen game.

I was hoping by the time next generation consoles roll around we'll be experiencing 4K and 60FPS but I know now that it would be a foolish expectation.

Anything since the 360/ps3 era is a framerate nightmare

That's why I like that MS is more focused on hitting 60FPS instead of resolution, Halo 5 will play so good and Forza 6 even hit 1080p 60FPS good job MS

Gotta reach that 2005 res target of 1080p tho. I partially blame Sony and its " it has to be 1080p, even if the console can't handle it (with few exceptions)" policy. God forbid you drop the resolution to something with a playable framerate.

Consoles are TEN YEARS behind in resolution/framerate performance to even modest gaming PCs. I'm not talking over the top madness like 4K 60 FPS Ultra settings. I mean 1080p at constant 45+ FPS with high settings across the board with a little bit of AA. That's something the GTX 950, a $150 GPU, can easily do when paired with an Intel i5 quad-core processor which a lot of pre-built PCs already have. Slap that GPU in, and you have something more capable than the Xbone OR PS4 in resolution/framerate performance.

And yeah, yeah exclusives this, exclusives that. Heard it. Not relevant to this post in the slightest.

Of course you wouldn't. Suddenly 20 FPS has become perfectly playable for cows.

last gen was also pretty bad in this regard and before that (the PS2 era) it wasnt exactly perfect either (i actually dont count shadow of the colossus as any sort of technical miracle on the PS2..the framerate is just too low for very long periods in the game. it was a bridge too far for the system.).

also to those who are saying more horsepower would solve the problem...no it wouldn't. if the hardware bar is raised then the software bar would just follow suit and we would just have better looking games running <30FPS. the PS4, X1 and wiiu are all perfectly capable of running a game at 60FPS and/or 1080P. they just cant do it with all the bells and whistles. the only reason the PC can do it is due to excess horsepower.

this is not a hardware problem. its a policy problem. many moons ago nintendo (and i think sega) used to be very strict about a games performance on their consoles. it had to load within a certain time. it had to keep a certain minimum framerate etc etc. thats all gone now. no one is going to tell ubisoft or EA that they cant release their game on console X until they have the FPS at a minimum of 30 and the game loads to the start screen within 15 seconds....aint going to happen. they can release the game in whatever state they want.

Not really. There are more 60fps games this gen than last gen, although most of those games are admittedly remasters. Frame rate issues have been a part of console gaming ever since the 3D era began.

Seriously a few exclusives doesn't worth it ... one should not sacrifice the quality of many products for having a few exclusive products ..

It's 2015 and 1080p 60 FPS isn't considered "standard". 1080p has been around almost a decade. Microsoft and Sony really dropped the ball on this one. They should have sold their consoles at a loss ala 360/PS3, and included much better hardware.

I don't own any PS4 games that go below 30fps.

This console generation is quite sad. The hardware was laughably dated the moment they launched and it only gets worse over time. The games will always struggle. If you care about a quality experience, PC is where it's at.

^

@wizard: Honestly though, you can't really force a developer to make a 60fps game. Even if the PS4 was more powerful, developers might opt to use that extra power to push their games further, thus resulting in a 30fps game with better physics or graphics effects.

What consoles lack compared to PC gaming is the element of choice. A PC gamer can choose to invest in a high end graphics card, or alternatively choose to lower graphical effects for the sake of FPS. Devs could put in a Low 60fps option into most games if they wanted, but they generally choose not to because of the console tradition of everyone getting the same experience.

I really don't think 60fps will ever become a standard on consoles because devs love to push fixed hardware as far as they can.

No....hermits bash the consoles for not doing 60fps on every game.

If console gamers were that worried about it...the PS4 wouldn't be selling more and more. Word of mouth that many games are only at 30fps would catch on and ppl wouldn't want the console.

So don't give me that "It's always on SW" horse shit b/c theres certain ppl who do the bitching....not everyone.

Saw a friend playing Mad Max on PS4 a few days ago and the exceedingly low frame rate when he got near Gas Town made the game unplayable.

@Motokid6: Arguing over framerate is not the same as complaining about framerate.

30fps and less flat out stops me buying a game especially if it's fixed or, even worse, capped like a lot of Japanese games coming to PC.

If I run a game and it's less than 40 - 50 I'll cut the settings back, I'm even getting to point these days that I'll cut back settings if I'm getting less than 60 but that's what comes of getting used to games running at well over 60.

Frame rate is a much bigger deal to me than resolution or bells and whistles.

I dunno man, all or at least most of the games I've played on my PS4 so far run really well. I'm pretty pleased with performance so far, and it's a huge improvement over last gen.

Agreed. I can deal with lesser graphics if it runs at a steady 60+fps. Poor performance is less forgivable. It ruins games for me. I am very anal about frame-rate.

Framerates have been an issue both in this gen and last gen. Last gen had some real doozies.

I suppose if you load a game up on console and spend all your time worrying about the frame rate instead of playing the game yeah you'll be disappointed.

I play on PC and both current gen consoles (non Nintendo) and still own both last gen consoles. I have never been as horrified by frame rates as most PC gamers claim to be. Honestly, I have been gaming on PC the longest time and still remember when 25fps was considered a perfectly acceptable frame rate for 3D games on PC yet now you have these clowns claiming to be physically sick if a game is not running at 60 fps while at the same time applauding indie shit that runs at 10fps and looks like fucking ass.

Honestly, not a single game have I played this gen where I thought OMG that frame rate is making me want to kill myself and while it is indisputably preferable to have higher frame rates (my PC manages 60fps on ultra for literally any game still) I don't immediately rush to the internet if I play a game on PS4 or X1 that doesn't reach optimum frame rates crying about what a horrible experience it is.

Make no mistake, a good PC is by far and away the absolutely best way to play multi platform games, but playing on current gen consoles is in no way the horrible experience some pretentious plebs would have you believe.

All the major retailers and online outlets have gone out of business due to a 99.9 per cent return rate on all console games from disgruntled buyers claiming 'omg dat frame rate make me sick'. NOT!

On old CRT's I'd get a headache if I played games (or anything else for that matter) at less than 60 - 75Hz refresh rates and I usually pushed for 85Hz to 120Hz. Frames per second didn't work in the same way as they do on modern monitors and weren't as much of an issue, there was no such a thing as screen tearing when the refresh rate outstripped the frame rate. Remember low Hz on a CRT monitor had very obvious flickering which caused all kinds of problems, eye strain being one of the most common.

I never actually went to an LCD monitor until they were refreshing at 60 fps and the refresh rate was acceptable without too much tearing, Vsync was the answer to refresh rates being higher than frames per second on TFT's, by locking the two together. it's also why low frames rates are an issue (for me) today. I can play a PC game for hours with no problems, I can't play a console game for much more than an hour without needing to give my eyes a rest.

@SakusEnvoy:

I agree with half your statement. In single player, yes, devs prefer to get the "wow" factor in screenshots and in E3 trailer footage, but in multiplayer, FPS has a noticeable impact on the game. Killzone, Battlefield, and other titles attempt 60fps multiplayer, but often need to sacrifice resolution to do so. Even so, PS4 frame drops are quite common and for games like the Witcher 3, drops below 30 are very noticeable. Console gamers like to throw around "optimization", but that term is increasingly less relevant. The PS4 and Xbox One have likely already peaked in graphical fidelity. There isn't much more room to go, bar a coding miracle, or cutting down scale/visual assets. The PS4 is practically a low end run of the mill x86 PC or a high end APU, neither is new to most developers. The Xbox One has ESRAM, but I doubt that will make a huge performance impact.

Got to look at it this way we could have been stuck with the PS3/360 until 2015 as baseline in multiplats. At least this gen has raised the bar in that regard.

Yup. The 8 GB of RAM being the best thing about this generation.

@mesome713: It is true on the Wiiu, they don't have many games that have frame rate problems, PC if your PC is powerful enough you won't experience it. As for 3DS, I've experience some frame rate drop here and there in some games, especially with the 3D on ( all Pokémon games have some animation that doesn't move as fast as it should with the 3D like the leafs during battles, same thing with Bravely Default that some place on the over wold considerably drop with the 3D on )

Hum every gen so far had frame rate issue. Take Mega Man on the NES ... frame rate issue here and there. On SNES, some frame rate here and there in many games, on PSX and N64 it was all over the place same with PS2 etc.

I agree that this has been an issue in previous gens. However, hardware and expectations have evolved over the years. The industry is no longer in its infancy. Many of us have been gaming at 1080p/60fps for many years, so tolerance levels are a lot lower for technical limitations and performance issues.

Than you'd better be willing to pay more for consoles. Sony was in no financial situation to sell their console for a large loss in 2013. The PS4 cost less to purchase in 2013 than the PS3 cost to purchase in 2006...and that's BEFORE I even adjust for inflation.

I'm frankly not sure what people are complaining about. Both the Xbox and PS4 have very pretty looking games on them. This obsession with 1080p resolution is asinine...the majority of "gamers" jabbering on about resolution wouldn't even know what the native resolution of these games were unless Digital Foundry told them.

Play games because they are fun, not because of the number of pixels on the screen. And I'm saying that as the owner of a PC that's playing the Unreal Tournament demo on max settings at 1080p at over 100fps constantly. I'm still going to drop it like it's hot when Halo 5 launches because I frankly enjoy the pacing and strategy of that game more than Unreal.

Just for the hell of it, I watched an analysis of Forza 6, a game in the 1080p/60fps "holy grail" category. It appears to have zero frame rate issues at all. Perfectly smooth. And it's neither a re-master or cross-generation game.

That is why Forza 6 is one of the few console games that is done right. Scaled back (but still good) graphics in favour of 1080p/60fps. Most games are pushing the weak hardware too far and then they have to sacrifice frame-rate or resolution.

This so much. The only time I could understand a sub 30fps experience were the N64 days because of how new 3D games were and they needed every bit of juice they could get just to make things work.

With the 6th generation there was no reason to sacrifice performance for graphics. But now visually speaking, even Wii U can produce stunning looking games at 720/60, although a 1080/60 game will look a little dated. So the Ps4 and Xb1 developers have no excuse.

@Bruin1986:

I wouldn't pay $300 for a console. That's irrelevant to the thread. It's quite easy to see lost detail at lower resolutions, even in up scaling. I super sample my games all the time, but it would be asinine for me to think that I'm truly gaming at 4k. Console games are artsy for sure, but haven't matched or improved upon IQ in games later than the beginning of 2013. If you don't see the difference, fine, but this thread is about framerate which is sacrificed for the magic 1080p. Console Devs are obsessed with hitting 1080p at the cost of 30fps. Framerate makes a noticeable impact on gaming quality. My issue is if 60fps is the sacrifice now, what comes later? Scale, physics, player count, map size, draw distance, and AI programming all effect gameplay and are going to be severely gimped on the consoles who frankly, cannot manage a high framerate, decent resolution or detail in combination, much less all of these improvements together. It's not about resolution, it's about the power to drive innovation. You think the PS4 can do VR? Not likely at marketable quality.