Confirmed: Watch Dogs PS4 900p, Xbox One 792p, both 30fps
No multiplayer freeroam for last-gen versions.
Ubisoft has confirmed the resolution and frames per second for upcoming open world game Watch Dogs.
The PlayStation 4 version runs at 900p resolution. The Xbox One version runs at 792p resolution. Both output at 30 frames per second.
In a Ubisoft blog post, Watch Dogs creative chief Jonathan Morin said it was more important for Watch Dogs to deliver "an amazing next-gen experience" than a 1080p resolution.
"Resolution is a number, just like framerate is a number. All those numbers are valid aspects of making games," he said.
"But you make choices about the experience you want to deliver. In our case, dynamism is everything. Exploration and expression are everything. You want to have a steady framerate, but you want to have dynamism at the core of the experience. The same goes with resolution.
"People tend to look at corridor shooters, for example, where there's a corridor and all the effects are on and it's unbelievable, and they forget that if you apply those same global effects to an open city with people around and potential car crashes and guys in multiplayer showing up without warning, the same effect is applied to a lot of dynamic elements that are happening in every frame. So it becomes magnified in cost."
Watch Dogs recently benefited from a delay that will see the game launch this month. Why not use the extra time to boost its resolution?
"The effort was split on continuing dynamism and making sure players can express themselves through hacking without ever being disappointed in how the game responds to them, whether it's visually or through gameplay," Morin said.
"That's important. Resolution has nothing to do with that. That's why stuff like resolution can scale a bit down so that we never compromise the soul of Watch Dogs."
Work on Watch Dogs began six years ago, and represents a major investment from publisher Ubisoft. The company hopes it will establish itself as a major franchise alongside Assassin's Creed.
The game is due out on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as PS4 and Xbox One. A Wii U version is expected later.
Morin said there will be some differences between the last generation and current generation versions. The single-player experience is "largely untouched", aside from the density of the open world Chicago. There will be fewer NPCs in some areas, Ubisoft said, "but not in a way that affects the core gameplay".
The seamless online is intact, as that's "part of the essence of the game", Morin said.
However, there are some modes missing on PS3 and Xbox 360: the Decryption competitive multiplayer mode and the ability to freeroam with multiple players (which Morin describes as more of a "bonus" than a core gameplay experience). But all the other online modes are fully intact.
