A lot has already been said about the downgraded visuals of Watch_Dogs. Watch_Dogs was meant to be a graphical showcase but the end result we got was a bit underwhelming. And since Watch_Dogs 2 is right around the corner, Ubisoft decided to shed some light on what went wrong with the first Watch_Dogs.
As Ubisoft’s Dominic Guay told Evening Standard, the development team did not know back then the specs of current-gen consoles, which is why the final game looked worse than the E3 2012 demo.
“One thing to remember is that the first showing of Watch Dogs came in summer 2012, before anyone knew what the Next Gen of consoles and hardware would be. We did our best at the time to predict what that would be and always were forward that this first showing was running on a very powerful PC.”
Fair enough, Ubisoft did not know the specs of PS4 and Xbox One. However, one has to wonder why the PC version was also downgraded. Since Ubisoft showcased the game running on a powerful PC, it should be able to deliver on that platform at least, right?
And that’s precisely why the French company failed to explain why on Earth the PC version was downgraded. Yes, PC gamers can use some mods to improve visuals, however there is nothing they can do about the less advanced lighting system that has been used.
Some will say that it was done for “parity” reasons. Others will say that the final game was way more demanding than its E3 2012 demo (with this kind of visuals) that even powerful PCs wouldn’t be able to handle. And others will say that Dominic simply attempted damage control in order to hype the sequel.
Fact is that Ubisoft did not provide a single reason why the game was visually gimped on the PC.
Dominic concluded:
“For Watch Dogs 2, we are in a much more predictable context. We have been developing the game on our target platforms from the beginning.”
Ironically, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: WildLands – a game that was announced when current-gen consoles had already been released – has also suffered from “downgrade-ation”. While this particular game is not out yet, its debut trailer looks way better than its latest E3 2016 build.
For what is worth, we are certain that Watch_Dogs 2 will look similar to its E3 2016 build.
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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So, once again, consoles hold us back??
Did they magically patch better hardware? No? Then why are you asking such an obvious thing?
always.
The API’s on PC platform change all the time.
You’re straight up retárded.
thank you kind sir. Can you ellaborate on this before start calling names?
Don’t play the “kind sir” fake bullshìt.
Ignore it, she’s the local bully.
Oh look, more abuse from the DSO Bully. We get it, you’ve been hurt in the past, let it go.
Actually consoles do hold us back and a big time if not consoles we would have the best witcher 3 game we could possibly get, with graphics so good it would melt your god damn trash console
Not actually true, as without the sales on consoles, CDPR could not have given us PC gamers, the game we actually got.
Also, why do you even look at E3 presentations, and expect the unmade game, to be anything like it? It’s always been hype and marketing, and nothing to do with the finally released game.
As long as fools base their purchases on such things and preorder the game, due to it, publishers will feed you that trash.
Witcher 3 as released, was one of the best looking RPG’s I’ve ever played, and CDPR kept up the patches to make it even better.
Also it was shown at E3 the year before release, long before it could be preordered, with the graphics as released, and nobody complained then. So don’t give me this sudden downgrade myth.
No console could cope with the PC Ultra settings, nor could most PC’s, even the best struggled with maxed out settings.
Contrary to the popular myth, its the low end to mainstream of the PC market, that holds back the high end of the market. Consoles are generally at that mainstream mark.
PC minimum specs are often below what the consoles can achieve, while the high end is far beyond both consoles and the maistream of the PC ownwers, with under 1% of PC gamers owning the best GPU at the time, and the 85% mainstream owners, which are at least 3 or 4 GPU generations behind the high end.
“Not actually true, as without the sales on consoles, CDPR could not have given us PC gamers, the game we actually got.”
The basis for this being, what? The damage control statement the CDPR head made after the epic backslash they got for downgrading the lighting system? Yeah, no, that doesn’t count.
Witcher sold just fine even before it got ported to Consoles, & so did Witcher 2. CDPR wasn’t “forced” to send Witcher to consoles in order to offset some epic-proportions loan or whatnot, they simply chose to in order to maximise profits.
See, here’s the problem with the rest of your argument; you’re assuming people wouldn’t have stronger PC’s if games weren’t more demanding.
Once again; Crysis. Crysis pushed systems, & in turn, pushed people to buy better, stronger systems. Once the “Crysis Push” faded however, people began to realise no matter how mid-end your Hardware is, you’re going to be able to get 40-60 FPS on just about any game released in 2010, 2011, 2012, because…. oh! They’re all just really sh*tty console ports.
If the graphics side had kept up with the PC’s ever-stronger hardware, rather than kowtowing to the Console’s ever-weaker hardware, we wouldn’t have such a vast amount of people on mid-to-low-end PC’s perpetrating ridiculous myths about “PC’s holding back PC Gaming.”
If someone made a new Crysis game today, & it crippled all mid-to-low-end PC’s, you don’t think those people would suddenly be thinking “hm… maybe it’s time for an upgrade”? Granted, there are obvious budgetary restrictions to keep in mind which a lot of PC users have to abide by, but regardless, there’s a reason people still have 8GB’s of RAM, & it has very little to do with being cheap.
Miss the days of crysis when it could not be played at ultra at release but looked better then most games that came out for 5 years after its release. That is how Watch dogs should have been. Instead GTA5 looked way better and it was a port from last gen.
“Also it was shown at E3 the year before release, long before it could be preordered, with the graphics as released, and nobody complained then. So don’t give me this sudden downgrade myth”
Wrong. The E3 2014 version was not visibly downgraded from the reveal trailer. Anyone who says otherwise is likely making too many assumptions. We simply can’t point out specifics as we don’t have good comparisons.
The game released HEAVILY downgraded from the E3 2014 demo. This included the lighting, which became completely flat. Interior lighting and the way characters were lit was also downgraded from what I could see.
Reflections were downgraded, blood floating on water during fights etc…
The E3 2014 version looked fantastic. The game on release looked nothing like it. The lighting is the most apparent downgrade here.
Do you have the mental capacity and memory of a toddler?
I’m one of the most vocal and first people to point out the Witcher 3 downgrade and lies by CDPR, I post about it all the time.
You’ve literally fcking replied to me before and have upvoted me you stupid fck.
Wow I didn’t know I had a console, I wonder what this custom rig worth thousands of dollars, in front of me, is.
You, sir, are and idiot.
Expain what “all the time” means?
Do you mean specs/configs?
I mean the revisions of DX that mainly game devolopers use.
(plus the gazillion configurations that PC users can have )
We now have DX12.Consoles have DX11.
We did have DX11 for many years but cross platform games -and not only them- were mainly developed for DX9 that previous generation consoles used.
Even though we had DX11 very few games actually used the features that was offered with mainly pseudo implementation of them or totally half assed and not optimised.
With consoles now being DX11 we ll have better and more DX11 games but we pc gamers we ll be waiting consoles to adopt future API’s we currently enjoy.
So yes consoles do hold “us” back. It is a fact and we can support delevopers that actually care and value their PC community.
Yes I know there are many API’s out there.
But lets focus on the most adopted one.
yea if Wildlands wasn’t downgraded (assuming it is) their parity excuse (which is a sad reality) could work for Watch Dogs, but they messed up which isn’t surprising. it’s a shame to see Ubi acting the way they do.
Stuff like this is always kind of fun to watch, them trying hard to bullshit people and failing.
TheWorse mod more than made up for it IMO.
Not even fcking close.
Olek needs a hug everybody, we’re here for you x
Do a proper response instead of your cringeworthy attempts at trolling.
It seems you don’t how this works kid. You see, you trolled me first, therefore you are the troll silly boy. Oh look, what’s this little button on the right? Why it’s Disqus’ new “block user’ option.
Bye bye kid, having the last word tastes so sweet x
Such a pleasant feature, I don’t know how my brain survived the comment section until now.
Olek has always been an annoying tw3t.
I wouldn’t say that, mostly because I can be a annoying tw@t too (it’s a matter of perspective really), let’s just say that his condescending attitude can be quite unpleasant.
Did the mod add in things like ScreenSpace reflections like they were seen in the e3 trailer ?
Mods are great, but in terms of graphics, they are often quite limited.
Ubisoft is manipulated by sony and microsoft daaahhh thats why didnt release a pc version, what it should have been, and stop bullshitting about pc’s couldnt handle it cause my pc could have handled watchdogs e3 trailer easy, aahh ubisoft what a terrible developers, and I consider myself a fan of assassins creed games but its hard to be one :I
Uh, this was released on PC though.
Yes but with same bad port and graphics as consoles
I can’t recall if i played on pc or ps4, but i remeber the visuals being fine. Not amazing, but fine.
Played watchdogs 2 weeks ago again on pc and no they didnt even look fine :I, pre-rendered cutscenes looked decent I guess, but when the game rendered real time it looked like trash
They’re dumb. They hid options. It’s more than a downgrade. It feels like they wanted to prevent powerful pc owners the ability to have a game much more beautiful than console counterparts.
F dem.
A lot of games require editing config files to get the proper experience (better graphics, minimizing stutters etc.), but I agree with the fishiness of those practices – like not showing a lot of important graphics options in the game, not properly optimizing the game yet deeming it fit for release to paying customers etc.
Just downloaded the first Splinter Cell for free from YouBeSoft and guess what was one of the first things I did to properly set the graphics options.
(edit 2 config files ofc.)
But I got it for free.
What about all the people who bought a game from 2003 for $20 from Steam?
Would it be too uncomfortable for devs/publishers to offer several config files with explanation, if integration of those options to the graphics settings via patch is beyond their reach?
I know all that dude.
I was talking about xbox and PC for easier “comparison” .
The statement doesn’t explain the hidden graphics settings within the PC version or why it had to be downgraded on PC, it just explains the console versions.
Another lie. Their other games were downgraded after Watch Dogs as well, even though they already knew about Console specs. They just like to lie and show you something that they can’t deliver in the end to maximize their sales.
I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for WatchDogs and The Division (atleast the Division had the core features intact, and was graphically one of the most advanced games of its kind)
The Witcher 3 got downgraded like crazy too.
The problem is Ghost Recon Wildlands. Maybe Ubisoft is telling the truth about Watchdogs, but that doesn’t change the fact that Ghost Recon Wildlands just got downgraded from reveal trailer.
Why exactly are we still beating the scattered ashes of rotten horse corpse burned during atomic explosion?
“YouBeSoft tries and miserably fails….”
Exquisite click-bait title indeed.
Ir8 h8/b8 m8!
Of course the XB1 is using DirectX, it’s just different to the PC version and low level.
Well, at least they are being honest, PS4 cant handle that $hit even nowadays progress on it!
goVEGAN
you all know consoles make them the most money so the pc versions will always be downgraded..lol
Watch Dogs was on last-gen consoles as well.
The obvious truth is that last-gen consoles held it back. They weren’t going to do two completely different versions, one for last-gen, one for current and PC. So the lowest common denominator won out. The current-gen consoles are weak, but they are weak in the way a gaming PC from 2010 or 11 is weak. They are still modern hardware. You can still make a modern game for them, you just have to scale the console versions way back, that’s why we see all the 900p and lesser resolutions, and why 60 fps is the exception. Long story short, yeah, Ubisoft is blatantly lying again.
True this is a damage control in order to hype the sequel of the garbage Watch_Sh!t 2… Man who understand Ubisoft and their brainless games.
Multiplatform development means you use the lowest common denominator as the baseline. The Watch_Dogs E3 demo had assets and shaders built specifically for high-end PCs and these assets wouldn’t have been feasible on consoles due to weaker hardware. It’s much easier to build for the weaker platforms and then just scale up things like resolution for the PC port. Creating different assets for PC vs console simply isn’t a viable option, especially when the majority of sales come from consoles. PC ports are created because they’re cheap and easily profitable. All it takes is a few programmers, a UI artist/designer and some QA. Creating new assets and shaders just for the PC port requires more artists, more programmers and more testing, leading to increased costs and lower profitability. Also, being a demo, there was obviously a lot of time spent making the areas shown look as good as possible. When it comes to full production of an open-world game, you can’t devote as much time on any given area because you need to build an entire world and not just a few small sections.
It’s strange that people don’t seem to understand the realities of game development and marketing when they seem so obvious.
“downgrade-ation”
Downgradation word looks fine to me, fits Ubisoft.
i have a feeling that so called “demo” was using two nvidia titans card and “NO” Watch Dogs 1 game was not a DX12 game. WTF come on now. No wonder it suck even on a PC.
Wtf are you talking about.
During E3 2012 the highest end GPU was the 680. And I doubt they spent a bunch of money getting SLI working that early in development on a totally new engine.
So what is the excuse for The Division, Rainbow 6 siege, farcry 3, farcry 4, Assassin’s creed unity, assassin’s creed black flag, etc?
Wildlands looks like crud too, though, compared to that first video. I can’t be bothered with any Ubi stuff anymore. Promos for WD2 look great but we all know the final game won’t resemble that.
The most appropriate response to this article hands down. My hats off to you sir.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b4c94e1407a49fbfc0f973b21cdc5442ceef2416f8994c9e4b2315573839f34c.png
Ubisoft is primarily a console oriented publisher. That’s where they make most of their money. PC sales of their games are only around 15% according to their financial report for their fiscal year 2014/2015 so when you are considering buying one of their games for PC then you can’t expect that it will make their console version look like crap.