YouTube’s ‘CrowbCat’ has shared a video featuring all of Ubisoft’s downgraded games. This video shows the differences between the E3 and the final versions of Watch_Dogs, The Division, Rainbow Six, Far Cry 4 and Far Cry 3. Unfortunately, CrowbCat did not include Ghost Recon Wildlands (a game for which its latest trailer features less impressive visuals than its reveal trailer). Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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They forgot to include Assassin’s creed but good video. Perfect timing as well because e3 is soon.
That is because they never downgraded an Assassin’s Creed game. Assassin’s Creed: Unity looked just as good as its E3 showing and perhaps that is why it ran badly on everything except the very high end PCs at the time of its release.
Hahahahaha
Nowadays it runs great though.
It was the first game i played with my 970 ! It worked perfextly on 1080p max settings. At the end of the month i am getting a 24”11440p 60 hz ips monitor after having a 21,5” 1080p ips for so many years and a game like unity will be perfect to show off the best graphics that my new monitor can show!!
That’s true for Unity, but they did it again for Syndicate.
More games are gonna join that list next week 😀
smh
???
E3 NEXT WEEK
date?
next week is E3!!!
Yes and Ubisoft will show of Watcdogs 2 Ghost recond wildlands For Honor Assasin creed (2017)> By the time these games release most of us here will have at least a 1440p monitor(if noi 4k) and a 8+ gb gpu so this ubisoft will not have any excuse to downgrade anything on pc!
They should be forced by law to say if its actual gameplay or Hollywood made trailers.
“By the time these games release most of us here will have at least a 1440p monitor(if noi 4k) and a 8+ gb gpu”
it amazes me how much this rich guy has buried his head in his own hole and cant see past his world.
“Most of us here”
I’m not a particularly big fan of quoting Steam Survey, but in this case….
– 1366×768 – 25.72%
– 1440×900 – 4.77%
– 1600×900 – 6.74%
– 1680×1050 3.98%
– 1920×1080 – 36.81%
– 1920×1200 – 1.35%
– 2560×1080 – 0.31%
– 2560×1440 – 1.53%
– Other – 1.96%
So yeah…… Just because “most of us here” are quite vocal about 4K support, it really doesn’t mean that much in actual numbers, you know.
Thats why i Love Radeon Idea of affordable PC Gaming for 199USD.
Maby then Games will go Forward, but Now it is how it is.
75% of gamers have whole PC’s for 700USD 😉 not just the GPU…
You can rest easily that steam survey is at least 75% accurate to the industry in general.
~70% in my opinion, but yeah, it’s good for showing general trends.
you don’t measure new tech by the percentage of people already on old tech
The point I was trying to make is that over 50% of Steam is on two primary resolutions – the laptop one, & the standard 1080p one.
Even after years of 1440p as mainstream, its adoption rate has been absolute sh*t. As such, there’s no reason to assume 4K will skyrocket to 30%+ market share in 12 months, or something.
because the majority craps out cash?
Yep I have lost ALL faith in Ubisuck ! I won’t buy theirs games anylonger because I know they are full of disappointment.
Eh, they have their ups and downs. Some of those games look pretty good even in the downgraded version so it makes no sense why they still do those embelished E3 ‘gameplay’ trailers. Just show the real game! People will still be impressed.
I mean, Eidos, Square and Naughty Dog did it. You don’t see people complaining FFXV (the demo) or Uncharted 4 looked different from their E3 presentation. And those are console games!
Watch Dogs 2 and Ghost Recon Wildlands Lel
At this point I came to the conclusion that ubisoft either do CGI video of future games, or add a bunch of aftereffect and edits game play. Either way I don’t really believe those functionality were ever implemented. I mean there is any real downgrade, what we saw are just videos of polished gameplays, I bet it’s way cheaper
I believe, many of the nvidia gamework partners like the cd project had some kind of tech ahead of its time.
you mean hardware speaking?
Yes.
FU** UBISOFT
Surprisingly Far Cry 3 got upgraded.
Better facial animation, thats it.
And character models just look at the skin
No. No it didn’t. Just look at the foliage the E3 one looked like crysis, the retail is cartoon.
at the expense of less object per area.
next stop ghost recon? I hope this will open the eyes of pre-orderers
Downgraded? Yes. Still great games? Yes. There’s no need to show us some ultra game at the likes of E3, they should be honest, they look decent enough anyway, they just open themselves to this kind of scrutiny. Silly.
Watch Dogs was by no standards a great game and Division is in the same boat.if you liked them that does not make them great.Also constantly lying about certain aspect of the product they are trying to sell or by showing you some areas of the game that you can’t possibly play because they are specially made for E3 is a serious matter for me and certainly not “silly”
True, but false marketing is false marketing. If they’re not confident enough in their own products to show them as they are then why should they expect us to want to buy them?
still? afer recycling them 10000 times are they still great?
“Still great games? Yes.”
No, not even mediocre, i’m talking about their designs which is awful.
pc gamers STILL crying about downgrades after all this time…lmao
Are you bipolar or something? In some comment chains you talk about upgrading your PC and sound like someone who doesn’t have brain damage and in other comment chains you sound like a console troll. Which is it?
i am bipolar lol.
consoletard typing garbage in this site after all that time lmao.
Most of this downgrades are because of “draw calls” limits in DX11. They try hard to create game with too many draw calls – Assassins Creed Unity. Game was beautiful but large amount of draw calls make that game unstable in DirectX 11 on PC. If we want better looking games we need forget about old DirectX 11 and support only DirectX 12 or Vulkan.
For me: new game without DX12 or Vulkan = no sale
Or what if these games need a 1440p or 4k monitor to have the same quality as we see on e3 and because most of us have 1080p monitor we think that they got downgraded….
Or what if you’re a brain dead rétard?
Hmm which conclusion requires the least amount of pre suppositions? I think it’s the former.
that made 0 sense
With all the marketing that 4k gaming is getting from pc makers to market high end pc it must make sense. If 1440p-4k resolution dont make a big improvement in games graphics then why game companies and pc makers are marketing it so much for high end pc gaming?
Rising the resolution won’t change the quality of the lighting and ambient occlusion.
nothing that shredder moron says makes sense.
Hahahahaha!
Guys, you’re misunderstanding Ubicrap. IT’S NOT DOWNGRADED, they only show a remastered version of their games first that will come out in 10 years or something 🙂
far cry 3 actually looks better, except for less foliage the tech looks actually better
I expected to see the video here on PC downgrade rant site number 1!
I hope Vivendi will buy them, they deserve this!
It could mean worse games.. as if thats possible but still. 🙂
Vivendi? You mean Activision-Blizzard?
Oh f*ck me.
I lie, you lie, they lie…
Everybody lies in one way or another…
The biggest underlying lie is that we as mostly male human beings have nothing better and/or more important to do (to focus our attention on) in our lives than play mostly numbing violent videogames (hypocritically hiding very dangerous female nipples, penises, vaginas because it’s not like they’re normal parts of everyone’s body are they, but murdering and gore is a perfectly normal thing we’d like to see as a common thing irl, right)?
Gotta say those scripted and voice-acted “gameplay” videos from YouBeSoft are cringe-inducing no doubt.
OMG here we go a preacher troll ! Naughty Dog doesn’t lie they delver everything they say they will and more in every game. Naughty Dog are GODS !
If you’re a female irl then wasting time playing violent vidjagames may not be such an issue for you as if you were a male.
Anyway as a proper preacher troll, I like playing violent fps games very much.
” Naughty Dog are GODS”
if your idea of a god is movie games that feel alike, sure.
WTF are you talking about, bro.
Ubisoft has been downgraded, so it’s no surprise their games have been too.
LOL! Gotta love when people say “diversity” and show a photo of a lot of white women.
Diverse doesn’t benefit anyone just like multicultural society as it prioritises diversity and cultures of actual good workers, same with prioritising women over men because gender diversity. You can’t get anymore sexist or racists when people pick “diversity”over just picking the right person.
Replace competent game programmers with a bunch of Tumblrina SJWs = you make shít games.
in the first picture i see serious that gives me a good impression of talent and seriousness and of course Jayde raymond that was a truly talented woman with great ideas and the mother of assassins creed.
meanwhile in the second picture i see the kind of people its fun working with but in term of actual work its an hit or miss they prefer the easy way and getting home early
thats just a psychological evaluation of a picture and people body languages but damn there is a huge contrast it feels like quality changed to quantity
Good lord I did a triple take.
One best pics.
Ubisoft has been doing this for years, and why should they stop ? People keep buying their overpriced sh**ty games..
Ubisoft has been doing this for years, and why should they stop ? People keep buying their overpriced sh^&* games..
without consoles we could have godlike games
without consoles.. most likely the gaming industry is dead due to piracy.
Piracy lol check the numbers
but this downgrade is really so bad.. someone should post this in their twitter and let them shame on themselves
Ubisoft already stated, that they couldnt do it cause of consoles and it wouldnt be fair
I highly doubt it!
it would with g2a,kinguin,cd keys and gm the industry would collapse.pc gamers dont even buy from dev’they wont pay $60 for a game. hence the industry would crash i agree with him 100%.
you are an idiot pc has the most exclusives.
“gamers dont even buy from dev’they wont pay $60 for a game. hence the industry would crash i agree with him 100%.”
HEY MORON what created the 60 bucks price tag? CONSOLES WITH ROYALITY FEES, freaking idiot.
i 1000% agree whit those shady 3rd world sites that sell stolen cd keys like g2a,kinguin,cd keys and gm the gaming industry would collapse if it was left up to pc gamers.
thats why 90% of games are multiplats so they can make money on console.pc revenue is esports.
They are not stolen nor are third world, shut your mouth moron.
Is this you dog?
thats is sweet i mite get that..lol while im gaming in front of my 50″ 1080 led tv.while you stare at your 22″ monitor…lmao
Bipolar Kid strikes again. I look forward to you talking about upgrading to the GTX 1070 in a few days in another comment chain.
ill actually be getting 2 $199 rx 480’s and beat your gtx 1080…lol
i do get bi polor some times….eh
*slaps forehead* Get help, man.
Without consoles we wouldn’t have console gaming. That’s about it. PC and mobile gamers far FAR exceed anything in the console market.
What piracy? Pc has the most exclusives, wtf you talking about?
Without consoles the gaming industry would be dead. (Not due to piracy like that idiot said)
I do not believe in that statement.
I think Brian’s right.
When gaming industry was in serious crisis, it was NES that saved it. Nintendo piqued interest of people in games once again, by introducing a system with reliable price and entertaining games.
Not 100% true & not 100% false, even in the crash PC had games like Elite etc… and they were kicking a**es
Good for you. Want a cookie?
I’d like to ! Do you have some ?
Without Consoles, we’d have far less AAA’s per-year.
Without Consoles, we’d have far more quality per-AAA every year.
Without Consoles, we’d be in an overall better position right now, since things like “downgrade controversies” wouldn’t f*cking exist.
Without Consoles, we’d still have free Demo’s as standard on Steam, which are a large portion of all Piracy downloads.
Without Consoles, we wouldn’t have Publishers willing to go for Always-Online DRM’s on PC, hence even less Piracy.
Without Consoles, the PC wouldn’t be so ridiculously held back by mid-level 3+ year old AMD GPU’s because Sony & Microsoft are cheap pr*cks.
Without Consoles, they’d have placed a far stronger focus on Mobile & Facebook games (thus remaining far afloat, regardless of what risks they took with the PC), of which neither are a problem to PC, fortunately – unlike Consoles.
Without Consoles – oh, you get the point.
Copy-pasting my comment:
“I think Brian’s right.
When gaming industry was in serious crisis, it was NES that saved it. Nintendo piqued interest of people in games once again, by introducing a system with reliable price and entertaining games.”
So yeah, I think consoles kickstarted the industry but now they are hindering it and could just die off.
brian is an idiot pc never had a problem. Consoles killed themselves with awful milking of garbage games nintendo showed something different and then they continued showing the same garbage. only pc has innovation because devs are not bound by anything.
consoles are the reason the industry is booming.pc gamers do nothing but play their cs go and over watch ect…ect..when a AAA title comes out they head right to g2a to fet it for $35…
the pc is about its esports thats it.
all great points im glad you see that..lol
“Without Consoles, we’d have far more quality per-AAA every year.”
Nonsense. No evidence for this at all.
“Without Consoles, we’d be in an overall better position right now, since things like “downgrade controversies” wouldn’t f*cking exist.”
No evidence for this at all. More rubbish.
“Without Consoles, we wouldn’t have Publishers willing to go for Always-Online DRM’s on PC, hence even less Piracy.”
:… What? I.. What?
“Without Consoles, we’d still have free Demo’s as standard on Steam, which are a large portion of all Piracy downloads.”
How the hell have you convinced yourself of this crap? Valve has to mandate this and they sure as hell aren’t going to do anything.
“Without Consoles, the PC wouldn’t be so ridiculously held back by mid-level 3+ year old AMD GPU’s because Sony & Microsoft are cheap pr*cks.”
Yes it would. Such a small number of people upgrade per year. 760/750 esque cards sell the most for these companies. Every so often a 970-like does well. But that’s the “high” end.
Let me put it another way;
Once PC stopped being the priority, Publishers stopped being piss-scared of infuriating their PC fanbase – their core fanbase, much like they’re piss-scared of turning off the Console fanboys these days.
As a result, they would never have had the balls to do the following;
– Degrade popular AAA’s into generic ripoff clones of other popular IP’s, or turn them into piss-poor quality annual franchises (quality reductions)
– Downgrade controversies. Watch Dogs PC hidden settings. ‘Nuff said, I think? Yeah……
– Always-Online DRM’s. Ubisoft would probably have pushed uPlay all the same, but they’d have backed off once they were overwhelmed by the negative response coming from their core fanbase.
– Demo’s were standard once upon a time. They still would be if Consoles hadn’t changed things by not allowing Demo’s, thus incentivizing Publishers to drop them from PC as well (like so many other things).
– You don’t really believe even a 5th of Ubisoft’s lineup (for example) from the last 3+ years (not to go back further) would look anywhere near this bad if it was PC-focused, do you?
– Don’t get me started on Gameplay gimps due to a strong Console focus (BF3 comes to mind, for example).
P.S. Thanks Durka, you reminded me of another important point;
Without Consoles, we wouldn’t have over-inflated $60 price tags as standard, since Publishers wouldn’t have been able to so easily push them through, justifying them to us by claiming “increased Console Royalties.”
Testing to see if this reply is pending, too.
So much of this is such obnoxious opinion inflated by PC gamer ego. And so many lies.
“Degrade popular AAA’s into pies poor annual franchises”.
That do quite well. Which is why they still do it. There’s a market. Can’t be too “piss poor”. Hell, their own investor call said they had 28m unique Assassins Creed players in 2015. A 7% increase over 2014. Such poor quality. People must be really dumb, though? Must be it. Only explanation.
“Always-Online DRM’s. Ubisoft would probably have pushed uPlay all the same, but they’d have backed off”
They would have “backed off” when their financials were hit. Which they clearly weren’t. Or else they would have backtracked. You’re not buying digital versions of games through uPlay on consoles. Only on PC. uPlay is still around. What’s that tell you? Pretty simple stuff.
“Demo’s were standard once upon a time”
And the Steam page has tonnes of them. AAA is not really around because they barely have the time to finish the game little alone a demo. And Youtubers would be more valuable than a demo, in this day and age to folks.
“They still would be if Consoles hadn’t changed things by not allowing Demo’s”
Absolute dumpster fire lie. How do you believe stuff that’s so objectively wrong?
Links used to be here. Seems to be the pending problem. Links were to demos on XB1 and PS4 on their respective stores. “Not allowing demos”. Man. Rubbish.
“You don’t really believe even a 5th of Ubisoft’s lineup from the last 3+ years would look anywhere near this bad if it was PC-focused, do you?”
“Bad”? Child of Light looked great. So do Unity and Syndicate, especially on PC. To think it would “magically” look better as PC-focused is nonsense. Large teams with lots of time and great tools make things look great. Which wouldn’t really be a thing without consoles. What’s the biggest PC dev team? Blizzard? Teams like that are always an exception. Everyone else is pretty small.
“Without Consoles, we wouldn’t have over-inflated $60 price tags as standard”
Yes you would. And there is no evidence to suggest otherwise
“Yes you would. And there is no evidence to suggest otherwise”
But apparently there’s evidence to the contrary? Please, feel free to procure it for us, in that case? The excuse they provided was literally “increased console royalties.” They may have probably tried regardless eventually citing inflation or whatnot, but it would have occurred differently, & it wouldn’t have paved the way for $110 “Deluxe” packs, or whatever they’re called right now.
Unity, Syndicate & Child of Light look good. That’s great, so that’s…. 3/30 (or however many AAA games Ubisoft has released in the last 3 years)? Great, great, yeah. That’s a great ratio, right there, yeah.
I mean, you realize you’re arguing against clear downgrading on an article that’s clearly pointing out repeated instances of downgrading over the course of multiple years, right?
So Microsoft & Sony decided to start allowing Demo’s, that’s interesting. I was thinking more of the PS3/X360, but hey, good to know regardless.
As for the “dumpster fire lie” – once Publishers knowingly started dishing out well-dressed sh*t (Dragon Age 3 for example) rather than actual quality games, they knew there was no way they could ever distribute free Demo’s anymore, since their lies would be stripped down bare in minutes, & be revealed as exactly that, which would in turn negatively affect Launch, & their bottom line, as you yourself mentioned.
Not to mention just piss-poor quality launches in general, can’t reveal the state of the game before they cough up their money, that would be waaaaaay too honest, you see, which brings me back to my “piss off the core fanbase” argument, which leads me to the degradation of quality arguments;
Once they realized how much money there was to make off of Consoles, publishers stopped holding up the bar to the same standards as before, & started moving it to accommodate for console players, testing things out to see what they could get away with, & what the new crowds were interested in, etc. The more they moved the bar, the more profitable things seemed to get for them, so they kept moving it. Eventually, the bar got as low as it is today, & ta-da! Degradation of quality into quantity (take the AC franchise going on break for a year exactly because it was crashing, Activision not reporting Call of Duty sales numbers anymore, etc.) – developing for the lowest common denominator, higher price tags, less content, etc. etc. etc. The mindset that’s gripped the AAA Industry for nearly a decade now, & has reduced even the once greatest of franchises & studio’s both to literally, sh*t.
uPlay did affect their financials (or rather, Piracy, as far as they’re concerned was the “real” cause), to the point where they almost pulled out of the PC entirely. There was actually a point in time a few years ago where Ubisoft was trying to deny us PC ports of their Games (tried to pretend they’d never announced a PC version of Ghost Recon Future Soldier, for example – true story), or just serve up 3rd rate trash ports, because that was how much they cared about the “measly” PC profits. You think that kind of treatment didn’t harm their financials? Why do you think they shaped up in the last few years, exactly? Goodwill?
Not that it’s made any of us want to go buy Ubisoft games on uPlay instead of Steam, for the record, we’ve just accepted that the moronic piece of sh*t software that is uPlay will remain around until Ubisoft gets their sh*t together. Why do you think they’ve actually left their games on Steam, instead of following EA’s example & pulling them all? They know how much they’d lose by doing so, just like how much EA lost by doing so. The only difference? In EA’s eyes, losing the 20% Steam Distribution fee was worth the trade-off, whereas in Ubisoft’s eyes it isn’t (yet).
P.S. 28 million players? What? When in the hell did a single Assassin’s Creed game ever even get close to GTA numbers, exactly? Because the only numbers I can find are these, & they tell a rather different story;
“To put it in perspective, here’s how each of the major releases on home consoles have sold:
Assassin’s Creed – ~11.28 million units sold
Assassin’s Creed II – ~11.36 million units sold
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood – ~6.92 million units sold
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – ~9.18 million units sold
Assassin’s Creed III – ~13.05 million units sold
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – ~12.72 million units sold
Assassins Creed: Unity- ~7.66 million units sold
Assassin’s Creed: Rogue – ~2.38 million units sold
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate – ~4.12 million units ?sold”
So yeah, talk about “dumpster fire lies.” Granted, they’re only console numbers, but I doubt adding in Steam’s numbers would suddenly magically boost anyone to “28 million” or anything close to it, even.
“But apparently there’s evidence to the contrary? Please, feel free to procure it for us, in that case?”
Burden of proof is on the individual making the claim. As it always is.
“Unity, Syndicate & Child of Light look good. That’s great, so that’s…. 3/30 (or however many AAA games Ubisoft has released in the last 3 years)”?
30? AAA? You just said “a 5th of Ubisoft’s lineup from the last 3+ years”. Which is it now?
“So Microsoft & Sony decided to start allowing Demo’s, that’s interesting. I was thinking more of the PS3/X360”
There’s a tonne of demos on 360/PS3. Go to MS/Sony marketplace. It’s filled with them.
“Not to mention just piss-poor quality launches in general”
Sure. They aren’t given the time. Which isn’t magically fixed being PC focused. XCOM 2 launched poorly. Everything from Creative Assembly seems to be on fire.
“Activision not reporting Call of Duty sales numbers anymore”
Pretty much everyone just announces “the money total we made”. When the sales are beyond freaking insane i.e. GTA 5, they announce it. But that’s rare. Do they even announce Halo numbers any more?
“uPlay did affect their financials… to the point where they almost pulled out of the PC entirely”
Did it? I’m looking at their annual report and I’m seeing PC sales go up. Each year. Until last years report when it went from 15% to 12%. But every other report its going up. And the standalone client released in 2012. Some numbers from 2009/2011 are a little weird but it’s before the client and they say in their report they were focusing on a smaller number of titles.
Where are you getting this from?
“When in the hell did a single Assassin’s Creed game ever even get close to GTA numbers, exactly?”
Yeah, that’s me. I didn’t think that included all the weird Assassins Creed games on mobile and those side scrolling games they make as well as main-line games in the series and stuff from years before. But, still, a lot of people are interacting with Assassin’s Creed. Yearly or not.
Not necessarily. You’d just have different games for different audiences. PC gaming was around before consoles and thrived during the 80s crash.
Without consoles we definitely wouldn’t have console games or console gamers, though. >_>
pc gaming is about esports.console gaming is about AAA titles.
Go take your bipolar meds.
yes
I look forward to giving you advice about what new GPU you should buy when you ask about it in another comment chain.
you mean the 2 $199 rx 480’s that beat the gtx 1080 in real dx12 tests..yea im going to wait for the 8gb versions for $229..i never didnt say i dont have a pc for gaming..lol
You’re gonna buy two of those cards when the industry is dropping multi card setups? In DX12 it’s on the dev to support it, not through drivers. You can imagine how many games are going to be single card. Don’t screw yourself.
xbox ui on pc win 10 store.amd=win
Console AAA gaming at “some games not even 1080p” and many games locked at 30fps. I don’t even call that gaming. I think we should call it Slideshowsimulator.
We didn’t argue for a while, i felt this was the right time to step in. Hello hpv!
it doesnt matter what you call it..lol
You’re right, that name was way too creative to be written on these walls. I should’ve just said that consoles are so underwhelming that car’s gps displays a better resolution with next gen maps lol… You of all should know. You go can go out there and buy a RX480 (200$) and byby console…
the xbox is on pc now what do you think im doing. ill have 2 rx 480’s in crossfire for win 10 stors xbox exclusives.ill call it my xbox pc.
Yé bouzin. Now you’re talking.
Pc gaming has the most games sorry you are wrong.
Would love to see your source on that one. Even if it did that doesn’t prove me wrong.
Try again
look at all that pc hate…good job…lololol
and you are right of course.
talking out of your a** again ? stupid.
Shush nobody needs to hear from you.
You are nobody, so stop counting yourself as everybody, pig.
Yeah. And everyone would have 1070’s.
/s
Ubisoft games are sh*t anyways.
Ubisoft E3 lineup in 2016:
Ghost Recon DowngradeLands
For 30fps Honor
Glitch’s Creed Empire
2012E3Dogs 2
& more stay tuned for the Ultimate Hype train 2016
In preparation for the coming week.
FYI, Naughty Dog and DICE do not do this, and they should be commended for keeping it honest. I always support honest devs.
They do they freaking do check out uncharted 2.
uncharted 4 downgraded twice. also battlefield 4 got downgraded.
Proof?
Which one ? they are tons of comprations about U4’s first reveal gameplay vs final (when drake wakes up in the mud). and in BF4, cloth physics got downgraded and compeletly removed from characters.
YOU BE SOFT!
Moral of the story? Don’t trust E3 gameplay trailers beyond story and gameplay mechanics (although I seriously wonder if it’s true the guy who made the video is using max settings, especially in R6, where also the lighting conditions are not the same). Also, you have to bear in minda what they call “vertical slices”: especially designed levels that give you an idea of how the final game will play so, evidently, level layouts, environments and NPCs are subject to change. Differences in lighting, textures and environmental interactions are something else entirely.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands & For Honor are next on the list to be downgraded.
‘Ubisoft : it’s not in the game’.
That was an interesting video. The original reveal trailers & gameplay look insanely detailed & so much better. It’s a shame the final products couldn’t keep that level of realism.
Gonna cry…
to be fair far cry 4 did not even use that area.
i guess you knew since you buy from them.
He’s a troll. In the comment chains in other articles he talks openly about his rig. In some comments he pretends to be a console tard and in others he’s just a regular PC gamer. He’s got mental problems or something.
…
Honestly if you look really closely the textures are better within the release games vs. the trailers. The lighting within the trailers is better, but its also slightly more cinematic vs real life. You can saw what you want, but its a mix of both give and take to me. Some for the better and some for the worse. Pause the FC videos of the side by side and you can see huge texture/model improvements in the release.
lol
“its latest trailer features less impressive visuals”
Even those less impressive visuals were in-engine, which might even gets worst when the game is released.
“Blizzard’s individual teams aren’t that big, it’s one of their problems.”
Can’t find many numbers on how big each team is. But they’ve increased one Wow team by 40% in the recent years and Hearthstone has 50-ish people working on it. I’d safely bet they have far more people working on WoW than most core dev teams have total. Which is, what, 200? Thereabouts?
“How would “large teams with lots of time & great tools” not be a thing without Consoles, exactly btw?”
Would a team of, up to, 1500 people have worked on Watcher 3 is it was only a PC game? Absolutely not. No way in hell. That game, as is, wouldn’t exist without consoles and the money they made from it. They made half their revenue from digital. Basic numbers we have suggest console digital sales are 20-25%, so less than half of their revenue came from PC. That’s a bit of a financial boondoggle as a PC only title.
Same with GTA 5. Or any modern AAA game. Ubisofts credits are 18 years long. Would any team of that size exist if their revenue source was just PC? No way. They’d be scaling back considerably.
“See, as far as I’m aware, they used to give Developers the time they needed, back when things used to be done better”
Back when most things were 1 platform, right? And games didn’t take 200+ people and 8 figures to make.
“Since when do Publishers not announce sales”
It might be just me, but I read a lot of “biggest IP launch” and not a lot of sales numbers. Amount of phat cash is also in that press release.
Judging purely by released content, they either have seriously f*cked up priorities/problems, or they’ve been shifting people away from WoW for years, because the amount of content per-Expansion has been getting smaller & smaller each time, culminating in the sick joke that was Warlords of Draenor, & massive content draughts over the last handful of years, the most recent one of which is still ongoing, & will continue for another month, assuming the leaked patch date is accurate.
They claimed Warlords was delayed for 6 months because they had to train the new “B-Team,” which was right around 2 years ago. I’m not sure if that’s the “40%” increase you’re referring to, but regardless if your team (or management, we can’t say definitely either way, I suppose) is so small/f*cked up that you have to basically stop development for 6 months to train a bunch of noobs, you have serious issues.
Either way, I’m not even sure if it’s true they’ve got two teams working on WoW now. Sure, they still want to make that beyond moronic “Annual Expansions” delusion of theirs into reality, but Blizzard’s basically vomiting out lies every time they open their mouths these last few years, so pass the salt shaker IMO.
I’m confused, are you saying 1500 people actually worked on Witcher 3? I find that number impossible to believe. Last I heard, it takes around 200-250 people to make an FPS, 300 to make an RPG, & 500 to make an MMO. As for Witcher 3 & Consoles – yeah, no, that was a ridiculous claim by the Studio’s head who was trying to justify the lighting system’s downgrading because of “platform parity.”
Consoles don’t make companies as much money as is presented on paper, either. Strictly speaking, on a sale-per-sale basis, a PC sale gives the pub/dev a way bigger cut of the pie than a console sale does, especially if it’s a digital sale. Console Royalties are something like 20-25% depending on the deal you get, & then with physical copies you’ve distribution costs, disc & packaging costs, etc. whereas Steam takes something like a flat 15-18%, depending on the deal you get.
Blizzard made PC games for 20 years before they touched consoles for the first time ever with Diablo 3. What’s the defence here? WoW? You don’t really think if WoW hadn’t skyrocketed itself to 10+ million subscribers they would have gone bankrupt years ago, do you? Granted, they wouldn’t be this big, but they’d be doing just fine, & most importantly, Diablo 3 wouldn’t have been such a f*cking joke if they hadn’t gotten to be so arrogant (in this case not strictly a console fault, but it speaks to the Industry’s Console Age mindset of “f*ck the people, because we can”).
Not to mention, as I said earlier – without consoles, they’d have thrown themselves at Mobile & Facebook a lot harder. Nobody would be bankrupt without Consoles right now, they just wouldn’t be as big – I said this myself as well – we’d have less AAA’s per-year, but each individual release would be of far higher quality, since they’d be taking far bigger risks with each one than they are now, where after a few weeks/months everybody’s ready to move on to the next big thing, just like the good little consumers they want us to be.
Crysis (2007) – “According to Yerli, Crysis cost $22 million to develop and it turned out profitable; or in his own words: “If it wasn’t profitable I wouldn’t be able to stand here.” The Crytek CEO didn’t reveal the game’s sales figures, but we know that it sold 1 million units in its first 3 months in market.”
So yeah, all you need to do, is do something right. If you do it right, they’ll flock to buy it, & it will be profitable. Do it wrong? Your community abandons you to go f*ck yourself, & your $66 million budget (Crysis 3) has you flirting with bankruptcy to the point where you’re selling off studios & IP’s alike to stay afloat.
“He notes that Crysis 3 has triple the budget of the original game in the franchise — a budget it can only get thanks to the fact that it’s multiplatform. But that creates limitations.
“The consoles are eight year old devices. Of course, in one way or another, they will limit you. It’s impossible not to limited by a limited console. By definition it’s the case. So if it were PC only, could we have done more things? Certainly, yes. Could we have afforded a budget to make a game like Crysis 3 PC only? No. People have to understand that this is a journey of give and take.”
(Note the highlighted bit pointing out how consoles held back the PC version of Crysis 3 (yes I noted the excuse afterwards too, the very same excuse so many others try to peddle all over the place, in turn. It’s pathetic.), not to mention how Crytek gutted Crysis 2 PC specifically by opting to make a console game instead of a PC-focused shooter like Crysis & Warhead – see “Crysis 2 will have DX11 at launch, etc.”)
I wonder if they could have afforded a PC-exclusive Crysis 3 had they not f*cked up Crysis 2;
“As of June 30, 2011 over 3 million copies of Crysis 2 have been sold across all platforms, which is less than Crysis on PC only.”
“The title, along with Dead Space 3, another EA title that was released in the same month, failed to meet the company’s sales expectations. Cevat Yerli, Crytek’s CEO, was also disappointed by the sales of Crysis 3.”
Should I even bring up the $114 million Star Citizen has accumulated for itself solely from crowd funding, all while being a PC-exclusive title? Which reminds me; CCP was founded almost 20 years ago (1997), & has since survived solely on the income from the PC-exclusive EVE Online. They tried to expand into consoles, but DUST 514 was no real hit, & EVE Valkyrie (VR) was only released in March.
You think a Steam-less Valve would be struggling right now, had they not made CS:GO multi-platform? Or Portal 2? Or the Orange Box?
I reiterate; Ubisoft, Activision, EA etc. – Yes, they’d be smaller today without consoles, but they’d also be far more focused on quality than quantity. Good companies who make quality rather than quantity can get by just fine, even if they never become big enough to be listed on the NASDAQ. Companies who focus on quantity on the other hand, flit between IP’s (& by extension Studios), drain them dry, & then move on to the next “big thing” like a bunch of blood-sucking leeches. – See WoW’s ever-dropping subscription numbers, Call of Duty’s ever-more fragmented community, & Assassin’s Creed’s break because of development burnout.
Are you saying 1500 people actually worked on the Witcher 3?
According to a presentation from the dev? Yes. Up to 1500 people worked on Witcher 3. That presentation is on CD Project Reds YouTube channel.
“Consoles don’t make companies as much money as presented on paper.”
Maybe. Maybe not. They’re still the bulk of the cash these pubs are making. PC, as I said earlier with Ubisoft(Ubi is the example because I had their earnings reports from earlier still.), is growing, but it pales in comparison to their console business. PS4 obviously leading the charge with that.
Here’s a breakdown for Ubi from last year:
PC – 12%
PS3 – 13%
PS4 – 32%
X360 – 13%
XBO – 20%
Wii – 4%
Wii U – 1%
Other – 5%
And from that 68% of their revenue was physical and 23% was digital.
Defence for Blizzard not being on consoles and being big? What defence? There are always outliers. Always exceptions to rules.
“But each individual release would be higher quality.”
You keep saying it and it’s still just wishful thinking. They’d be playing it safer than ever. Why would anything but that happen? The market would be considerably smaller. And Steam your only distribution.
It’s business.
22 million budget ain’t Happening for AAA, now. That’s your marketing budget.
I don’t remember asserting you couldn’t do more with a PC focused released. You’re now just going off the rails now.
The budget argument still holds.
Star Citizen? What’s with you and exceptions to rules? It makes no sense.
“CCP was founded almost 20 years ago (1997), & has since survived solely on the income from the PC-exclusive EVE Online”
yeah, again I’ve never said this can’t happen.
Yeah I went looking for it afterwards;
“CD Projekt’s internal development team was made up of more than 240 people representing 18 nationalities, while around 1500 people were involved in the development and launch of the game globally.”
The article goes on to state that the Witcher 3 had an $81 million budget, but that’s including marketing, so we can’t specifically say how much of it was spent on development, & how much on marketing, etc. Either way the core team was 240 people, though it doesn’t say if they outsourced artwork or whatnot, or if the rest are all just marketing, distribution, etc. people.
That’s exactly the point, they would be playing it safer – instead of downgrading (ex.) Battlefield 3 into “Call of Duty: Battlefield” they’d have spent actual effort to make sure the damn thing launched well & was received well by the established BF fanbase, instead of just making a piss-poor CoD clone in a Battlefield skin, throwing it out the window to fend for itself in order to meet a release window, “& damn the community backslash we’ll get from its disgracefully poor launch.”
They wouldn’t be trying to push things like Battlefront out with such tiny amounts of content (this goes for the Industry as a whole, not just EA), they wouldn’t be taking such massive risks with some of their most notable IP’s, etc. Yes, this would come with certain sacrifices – launching a new IP would be even more difficult than it is now, for example, but overall it would be for the better, as (again), each individual release would be of far higher quality – because they could not risk them not being well received. Dragon Age 3 would never have been released in that state, for example, & RPG’s in general would not have been degraded into Fallout 4 levels of “follow the arrow” epic fail.
Why would it be a Steam-only world? Brick & mortar PC distribution hasn’t died yet, & I see no reason why Brick & Mortar distribution would have died without consoles. It’s not like they don’t sell handheld games, etc. you know. Not to mention Collector’s Editions, etc. Plus EA would probably have tried to push Origin regardless, simply to escape the “Steam distribution cut fees.”
You said; “Back when most things were 1 platform, right? And games didn’t take 200+ people and 8 figures to make.” So I pointed out a game that was made on 1 platform with 200~300 people, cost 8 figures to make & which also made a tidy profit. Why? Because it was quality over quantity.
Have budgets increased considerably as of 2007? Sure, even excluding ridiculously overpriced marketing campaigns, you still need to shell out a lot of money to make a game, so you want a return on that investment. Quality gets you that return, not only in the short run, but also in the long run. Quantity gets you return in the short run, but in the long run the IP suffers for it.
What exceptions to what rule? That you have to be either console-exclusive (since there’s plenty of console-exclusive Studios doing great), or multi-platform to be profitable when doing major AAA projects? That’s not a rule, that’s a claim you’re stating, which you’ve yet to actually prove, all while dismissing my evidence to the contrary as “exceptions to the rule,” or whatnot.
I repeat; without consoles, AAA Publishers wouldn’t be as big as they are, since they’d be focusing on less releases every year, but they’d be making better releases every year, because of those restrictions. Here’s another “exception” to the rule while we’re at it; ArmA. You’d be surprised how many “exceptions” there are out there. Almost like, these “exceptions” aren’t really “exceptions.”
Take the Ubisoft income breakdown you yourself brought up; Let’s say Ubisoft wasn’t making Assassin’s Creed, Tom Clancy, Watch_Dogs, etc. for PC + Consoles, but instead solely for PC; do you think without consoles, Ubisoft would only be making PC’s 12%? Because I’m pretty sure that without consoles, a lot of gamers would have gone for PCs instead (literally due to lack of choice), thus making PC’s income a lot bigger in a consoles-free alternate reality.
Not to mention reducing development costs by eliminating the need to make & support three versions of each release (PC, PS, Xbox), & the mandatory platform fees that PC continues to not have, but consoles do.
“RPG’s in general would not have been degraded into Fallout 4 levels of “follow the arrow” epic fail.”
Except it would have happened because it’s insanely popular. Regardless of consoles. Games would have absolutely gone down that route of accessibility. Because of course it would. These are for profit businesses interested in the widest appeal possible. Arguably sooner in a “console free” world. Gotta expand. Business 101.
“Why would it be a Steam-only world?Brick & mortar PC distribution hasn’t died yet”
:…Sure? You even stated “without consoles we would have moved to digital as primary distribution means sooner”. And that’s a Steam world. Unless GFWL took off like a boss. And that maybe could have happened? Depends on MS’s seriousness on PC during this alternate reality.
No one said Brick and Motar goes away completely.
“So I pointed out a game that was made on 1 platform with 200~300 people, cost 8 figures to make & which also made a tidy profit. Why? Because it was quality over quantity.”
And it was a different world in 2007. Prior to the mobile explosion. Prior to the online/MOBA explosion and prior to software sales for, almost, everything going down. Regardless of quality. Some exceptions. As usual. Which points to nothing meaningful.
“What exceptions to what rule?”
How is this not painfully obvious? You’re using Star Citizen as an example. The only example of that scale. The next gaming-oriented crowd funding thing that was “big” Ouya. Everything else pales in comparison. It’s an exception. Which is obvious. Or should be.
“Ubisoft would only be making PC’s 12%”
Of course not. It would be bigger. No idea how much bigger. Since, for them, consoles are, almost, their entire business.
“Because I’m pretty sure that without consoles, a lot of gamers would have gone for PC’s”
“A lot” is generous. The PC industry has taken its time fixing its accessibility issues. And it’s still got it’s issues that plenty of people still want to avoid.
PC’s are super easy now. But in a late 90’s console free world? PC’s were a nightmare hillside.
“the mandatory platform fees that PC continues to not have”
“Here’s another “exception” to the rule while we’re at it; ArmA.”
ArmA is a military shooter/survival game. It isn’t much of an exception. Those games have been big for a while now.
“You’d be surprised how many “exceptions” there are out there. Almost like, these “exceptions” aren’t really “exceptions.”
Almost as if you don’t know what an “exception” means.
Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, released in 2002, for the PC & Xbox. Arguably the last great ES game. Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, the first controversial ES game, released in 2006 for the PC, X360, PS3 trinity. Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, released in 2011 for the trinity, follows the “new age” path as set forth by Oblivion before it, & is generally regarded as “a f*cking joke” by serious (read: old school) RPG fans.
Fallout 3, developed by Bethesda, released in 2008 for the trinity, received controversially by age-old fans (see above). Fallout: New Vegas developed by Obsidian, a group of former Interplay devs (the original Fallout creators), released in 2010, also for the trinity. Largely acclaimed as being far superior to Fallout 3. Fallout 4, developed by Bethesda, released in 2015 for the new-gen trinity, received even more controversially by age-old fans.
I can make one of these for every major IP there is, if you want, & explain how massive backslash from the core fanbase would have alienated these “lower the bar as much as possible” approaches once Publishers realised they were alienating vast swathes of their established fanbases in favour of untested, extremely risky waters. Consoles swept aside such fears in a short window with their massive income pie %, which basically established the new status quo as default, no matter how the old fans might react (see, again, Battlefield 3, for example – “f*ck the old fans” could have been its tagline). They (the fans) never had a chance to react properly in front of the overwhelming $$ signs that started popping up in the suits’ eyelids almost immediately once they realized how much untapped financial potential consoles had.
Yes, I said, as you quoted, “primary distribution” – not exclusive distribution. I never said a word about the downfall & subsequent total & utter annihilation of brick & mortar stores in a consoles-free world, as I don’t believe that would be the case (it seems neither do you, we agree on something!). As for GFWL – I figure it would have either died even faster, assuming it even existed in the first place (since Microsoft would never have dared piss off its PC playerbase so badly without the Xbox), or they’d have adapted it to be an actually decent competitor to Steam, which I doubt most of all (think of the Zune, for example – Microsoft just shoots & shoots, when they miss, they just let the target go instead of adjusting their aim & trying again).
“Steam World.” Hm. Interesting. Never thought of that expression before.
The way I see it, accessibility problems began to stop being a major issue around 2006, between the PS3, X360 & the start of the social media “boom.” The iPhone’s 2007 debut was another such major contributing factor, with smartphones going “mainstream” around 2010 (not to mention the iPad’s 2010 debut). Between all these incentives getting more & more people ever-more invested into the Internet, & the ever-more popular All-in-One PC’s, Laptops, etc. accessibility issues would have fallen away years ago regardless, even without consoles.
Not to mention how many people picked up a PS3 simply because in their eyes, it was a cheap Blu-Ray player & subsequently started buying PS games “because, why not?” Sure, PC’s still got a fair number of issues to this day, but most of them can easily, quickly be resolved by a swift Google Search, if nothing else.
Sure, the ’90s were the ’90s, but in the ’90s Gaming was largely limited to the nerds/geeks sub-community, & home computers were largely in upper-income households/business homes anyway. It wasn’t until the Windows 2000/XP era that the average consumer started picking up a PC for “everyday use,” & even then it was largely limited to “click Internet Explorer to check emails” once a day or so. I mean, what average bloke on the street knows what Netscape is, compared to Internet Explorer, which is basically a household name (at least for another decade or so, I suppose).
Plus there weren’t even that many cross-platform games before the PS3/X360 era. As I recall, the most popular PC games got console ports sometimes (take Quake 3 for instance), & some PC titles were jointly developed for the Xbox or PlayStation in a handful of cases, just as some games were even then exclusively developed for the PS2 & Xbox respectively, but that was about it I think? What else was there at the time, the Gamecube? I forget.
2007 – Didn’t everything generally go down (sales-wise) with the 2008 economic crisis, though? Regardless of quality, yeah. The Industry took a hit of something like 8%-10% in 2009, IIRC, across the board, regardless of platform. The only way to avoid that would be if the consoles-free alternate reality didn’t have the 2008 economic crisis either (which I admit, would be nice).
Though saturation was also likely a factor, to be fair. Sure, the belt tightening would have probably pushed Publishers to expand their horizons (I’m assuming that’s what you’re getting at?), but that would have (arguably) meant more “easy money” projects (ex. the subsequent F2P boom, which I believe started around 2010?), not more “established, secure future IP’s defiled for quick cash grabs” which would have, again, ended badly for them without consoles to pave the way for such a change in core focus, etc.
I meant Star Citizen as more of a general example of a pc-exclusive making major money, but sure, fair point in it being the only crowd-funded game to reach such numbers (so far). Regardless, as I said the point I was trying to make is that pc-exclusivity can be extremely viable & highly financially successful, if the game itself is simply done right. Hell, the RTS market is still 99% PC-exclusive, & it’s its studios a load of cash, not to mention the MMO market which remains largely PC-exclusive, even with consoles slowly breaking in to specific sub-genres.
I could always just go back to pointing out how multi-platform Crysis sequels made Crytek far less money than PC-exclusive Crysis (all while costing a hell of a lot more) if you prefer. Granted, I think we can both agree in this case that that’s an exception to the general rule, but in the sense of quality over quantity, it makes my point for me; Crysis 2 & 3 sucked, which in turn caused them to sell like sh*t, whereas Crysis & Warhead didn’t, & because of that, they actually sold well, & continue to have communities, even today, almost 10 years later, whereas Crysis 2 & 3’s Modding & MP communities went & died shortly afterwards.