‘Batman: Arkham Knight’ Recommended Spec Shows Disconnect With Gamers

Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment (WB) released an extensive list of “fixes” for Batman: Arkham Knight on PC yesterday. The PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight has been a complete and utter mess. PC players have been dealing with unstable framerates, memory leaks, low resolution texture streaming, and so on since Batman: Arkham Knight released on Tuesday. However, one sentence is all you need to read to realize the disconnect between Rocksteady and the PC audience.

“The Recommended Spec is intended to deliver an experience on par with the current generation of gaming platforms.”

Forget that Batman: Arkham Knight released with a bevy of issues. The very fact that WB is claiming that the objectively more powerful platform is simply “on par” with consoles is sure to set off many of the hardcore PC users who bought expensive hardware to play Batman: Arkham Knight at maximum graphics.

The argument that “consoles are holding back PC gaming” is one I’ve have taken with a grain of salt, but it’s still a question many are asking. By stating that the PC version was built to be “on par” with what console gamers will expect can be seen as an open admission that the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight was not developed to maximize PC hardware. Rather, the statement seems to suggest that the PC version was deliberately held back in order for the console versions to keep up. In fact, Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry analysis shows that the PC version is lacking specific features found in the console versions of Batman: Arkham Knight. A PC built to the recommended spec listed for Arkham Knight would exceed every console benchmark for just about every game on the market. This could be seen as a clear argument for those claiming the Xbox One and PS4 are hindering true gaming as a whole.

This admission, along with the statement that players should lower their graphics settings, as well as not playing above 1080p in order to achieve a “playable” experience in Batman: Arkham Knight, and the game has become the flagship example of a company that doesn’t know their consumer base.

Yes, PC players are only a part of the equation in terms of your potential customers, but it’s a significant portion of those who will buy your game. This reeks of blatant disregard for an entire player-base. If the game is optimized to run on two-thirds of your consumers platforms, why not actually make it run adequately and take full advantage of everyone’s platform?

To me, this indicates those behind Batman: Arkham Knight’s development simply don’t understand what PC gamers consider standard features in 2015 gaming: uncapped framerate, higher resolution textures (and higher than 1080p gaming), multiple antialiasing options and other PC-specific features to get the most out of their experience. It seems as though the PC version was an afterthought, something that can be attributed to Rocksteady outsourcing it to a company not known for PC ports.

PC gamers don’t buy $1000 graphics cards to have the same experience as console gamers. Batman: Arkham Knight should have been developed to allow those fans to take advantage of that extra power.

Will everything be perfect upon release? No. Today’s gaming market has taught us that nothing will ever release without issues. It’s a sad reality, but that’s what it is. However, there is a difference between releasing something with bugs and releasing a product that does not live up to the quality one expects when spending hard-earned money. Batman: Arkham Knight is a clear example of the latter.

Hopefully WB and Rocksteady can save face and provide PC gamers with a version of Batman: Arkham Knight that respects the platform. Gamers, regardless of platform, have long memories. No one will remember that the PC version was ported by a studio known for their Destiny PS3 work. Rather, Rocksteady and WB will be held in the same regard as those who continually push out sub-par PC versions of popular games. And that is a stigma no developer wants.

Playing or attempting to play Batman: Arkham Knight on PC? Sound off on your experience below.

[Images via Warner Bros, Eurogamer]