‘Dragon Age: Inquisition’ 900p On Xbox One, 1080p On PS4; BioWare Tweaks Ubisoft
The console resolution debate between the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One continues with Dragon Age: Inquisition, the next title up on the list. Electronic Arts and BioWare confirmed the resolution for both systems Friday while taking a veiled shot at Ubisoft over the Assassin’s Creed Unity resolution kerfuffle.
BioWare confirmed that the Xbox One version of Dragon Age: inquisition will run at 900 versus the 1080p for the PlayStation 4. A frame rate was not announced, but is likely to be 30 fps since that is the standard for open-world titles.
Confirmed: #DAI resolution is 1080p on PS4, and 900p on Xbox One. We maximized the current potential of each platform.
— Dragon Age (@dragonage) October 10, 2014
The “We maximized the current potential of each platform” line is the part that is a somewhat friendly poke at Ubisoft. Assassin’s Creed Unity Senior Producer Vincent Pontibrand stepped into controversy when he stated that the game’s 900p resolution was because “We decided to lock [PS4 and Xbox One] at the same specs to avoid all the debates and stuff.”
Ubisoft was forced to walk back that comment in a lengthy post on the publisher’s official blog on Thursday. Pontibrand apologized for his wording, and a detailed explanation for why Assassin’s Creed Unity runs at 900p was given.
“We’ve spent four years building the best game we could imagine. Why would we ever do anything to hold it back?” Pontbriand explained. “I simply chose the wrong words when talking about the game’s resolution, and for that I’m sorry.”
Ubisoft explains that it is the CPU of both consoles and not the GPU that is bringing the resolution of Unity down to 900p. In order to support the large crowds, the resolution of the open-world game had to be scaled back.
Keep in mind that previous Assassin’s Creed games could support around 100 to 150 NPCs; Assassin’s Creed Unity has crowds of thousands of NPCs on screen, and you can interact with each and every one them.
“We made the right decision to focus our resources on delivering the best gameplay experience, and resolution is just one factor,” Pontibrand said. “There is a real cost to all those NPCs, to all the details in the city, to all the systems working together, and to the seamless co-op gameplay. We wanted to be absolutely uncompromising when it comes to the overall gameplay experience. Those additional pixels could only come at a cost to the gameplay.”
Unfortunately for Ubisoft, the damage to Assassin’s Creed Unity is already done. The immediate impression from gamers is that Ubisoft held back the PS4 version of the game. Once something like that gets out, it is hard to take back and leaves the company open to ridicule from others.
What do you think of the Dragon Age: Inquisition and Assassin’s Creed Unity resolution debates? Let us know in the comments below.
[Images via Dragon Age, Assassin’s Creed Unity]
