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Report – Microsoft & Sony Pressuring Ubisoft For 30FPS On PC

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Man, things are really going downhill for Ubisoft. After the whole 900p/30fps debate parity surrounding Assassin’s Creed: Unity, a new report surfaced, suggesting that both Microsoft and Sony are pressuring the French company for 30FPS even on the PC. Yeap, you read that right; MS and Sony are pressuring Ubisoft to lock the PC versions of their games at 30FPS. Hilarious.

This information comes straight from Ubisoft’s employees. During a school presentation about game programming, a Ubisoft employee revealed the following information.

Kudos to Reddit for providing the following transcript.

“So what the hell happened with watch dogs?” u/Egg_Slicer

During the presentation, the Online Programmer said that just before they release a game, they have to send a copy to console manufacturers, which then tell them what to keep and what to throw away (sooo yeah Watch Dogs maybe ?).

“30fps vs 60fps” ? everyone

The Game Architect said that they aim for 60 fps but due to “limitations”, they have to settle for 30 fps in recent games. He then implied that console makers are pressuring them into doing the same thing on PC.

“Ask how bad the upper/middle management is.” u/Ed130_The_Vanguard

The HR rep said that managers are former programmers and can sometimes be interns. But people are always managed by someone who could do their job.

Not asked, but worth mentionning :

The Game Architect said that they try to re-use code as much as possible. So that’s maybe what happened with the AI in Watch Dogs which was taken from AC.

“Are you aware of the negative response to the recent decision to lock your games (like AC:Unity) into 30 frames per second? If so, what do you think about that?” u/TwinDragonsOfChaos

I asked this question at the end of the presentation, everyone laughed. The Game Architect said that on consoles, and for this type of game, they have to chose between graphical fidelity and smoothness. He implied that MS is making them lock the framerate on PC too. Then, he smiled, said “But our eyes can’t see past 24 fps anyway” and winked at me.

“Then maybe ask about the impact of AI on these APUs in the consoles.”

They said they have to use Microsoft’s cloud instead of the APU to do the AI in certain games due to hardware limitations.

“You can also ask what is the preferred platform to develop for.”

PC, because they have to use specific languages and debuggers for each console and then validate the game with the constructor.

“You should ask them if they get any say in what the PR people are telling us.”

They don’t. Clearly the two engineers were no peasants, but they were asked questions they could not answer. He only implied that there were hardware limitations all over the place. And his wink when he told me that 24fps was all we needed confirmed that.

“Do people who work for Ubisoft have mobility ? Can they work abroad if they want or change their career path ?” (question from a classmate)

Yes, engineers can become managers and vice-versa, they can also fill openings in other studios, or change teams.

[UPDATE]

The original Reddit poster contacted us about the story. In order to protect his identity, we removed the link to Reddit, removed information about Ubisoft’s employee, and deleted the line in which we claimed that the information comes from Ubisoft itself (Reddit’s poster claimed that it was his deduction and not the exact words of Ubisoft’s employee). While we’ll keep this story live, we sure as hell want to protect both Ubisoft’s employee and Reddit’s poster.