“Unfortunately, I can pretty much guarantee that a lot of next gen games will still target 30 fps,” said Carmack.
Targeting a typical frame rate of 30 frames per second could also mean many displays of future console games will also come in at a resolution of 720p.

Source

How do you guys feel? Is 30 FPS/720p good enough?

I'm bummed that the goal isn't 60 FPS and true 1080p but at the same time, if next-gen games can achieve a consistent 30 FPS with enhanced shader and rendering techniques over current console games, then the future will still look pretty good. My biggest fear for the next console cycle is that the hardware won't be there to support a constant 30 FPS. If not, I feel like new consoles will be doomed from the get-go.

I just don't see it, Carmack made a pretty terrible game with Rage that was poorly ported to consoles, doesnt mean everyone will.

Good, we don't want games to start looking like soap operas.

Better graphics will always be a priority for many devs, and I believe 30 FPS facilitates that.

I've never been able to actually tell the difference between a game running at 30 FPS and one running at 60. Is there an easy way to determine this?

Honestly? This is basically saying not all devs will hold themselves to standards. That's..business as usual. People who want to get 60 FPS? They'll still target that. This basically says nothing new.

I just don't see it, in my opinion Carmack made a pretty terrible game with Rage that was poorly ported to consoles, doesnt mean everyone will.

They can make console games look better at 30FPS, 720, so yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that's how things went. Maybe they'll shoot for 60 FPS, 1080p for the first year or so, but as soon as developers realize that these particles and this explosion won't work unless you lower the resolution and framerate, well, they won't hesitate to drop them.

I don't have a major problem with that as long as two things happen - the first is that 30FPS stays consistent and doesn't drop often, the second is that motion blur is properly implemented so that it looks good, but doesn't make it hard to see anything around you.

I feel like I should be posting that PC Master Race picture or something.

Carmack has released what....one game this generation? And not that great of a game from what I've heard....

It's like your grandfather telling you about the internet.

Well, you can't really force developers to make all their games run at 60FPS.

Any speculation is still pretty much useless now without specs out in the open. There might be very different goals with the technology in these machines than simply amping up the power/graphics/framerate. And 1st and 3rd party development, as we've seen, can produce wildly different results in terms of visual prowess, e.g. Uncharted, Killzone, even Mario Galaxy on the Wii. First party devs will push the envelope much farther than third when going for visuals, so don't count out 60 fps, or whatever your preferred visual aphrodisiac is, just yet.

I have no problem with that. Honestly, there are some games that I prefer at 30fps, such as Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Far Cry 3. I know that sounds weird, but the thing about 30fps is that it helps to add a specific level of weight to the environment and character animations. I think taking that away can actually hurt some games, as it makes everything feel...floaty.

@drewmaw: we were in danger of not getting this on page one, now I can sleep easy tonight.

they at least need to go 1080p next gen....

I don't think anybody's expecting console games to run higher than 30fps standard if you can do four times as much stuff as you could at 60fps. I'd rather have games that pushed the console hardware for which they were designed, and then play them on PC if I needed higher framerates or resolutions. However 1080p will definitely be the standard for next gen... I mean how could it not?
 
@Vinny_Says said:

Carmack has released what....one game this generation? And not that great of a game from what I've heard....

It's like your grandfather telling you about the internet.

I'll start listening to Carmack when he makes a good game again. See you in 10 years, 20, never? It has been over a decade since Quake III.

tbh I don't really care if consoles are 1080p or 60 FPS, I start university in like 9 months; I'll only have regular access to my gaming PC over the next 4 years. I might not even have that when I move to Japan 2014.

@jakob187 said:

but the thing about 30fps is that it helps to add a specific level of weight to the environment and character animations. I think taking that away can actually hurt some games, as it makes everything feel...floaty.

I have no idea what you are talking about there, or you are just playing the wrong games. Plenty of weight while running at 60 FPS, go and play a fighting game with a big, heavy character like Hulk or Zangief and tell me they feel floaty.

@FluxWaveZ said:

I've never been able to actually tell the difference between a game running at 30 FPS and one running at 60. Is there an easy way to determine this?

Are you serious? It is night and day. If you genuinely can't tell the difference then perhaps there's some sort of flaw with the way you perceive motion, and no that's not meant to sound like a dick move.

http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html#

I think still images probably sell games more than nice fluid motion, so it makes sense they would target texture quality over frame rate.


Doesn't mean I have to be happy about it though.

You know what would be cool, some sort of toggle, ala PC games. You could either have 1080 resolution and 30 frames or 720 and 60. Because I'd probably pick the latter.

If that is true then I am fine with it. 60fps is cool and all but it hasn't been enough of a big deal for me to care all that much.

@rebgav said:

@Ravenlight said:

Is 30 FPS/720p good enough?

Nope.

It's inevitable that devs will still target (and still fail to hit) 30fps. People prefer to buy games which look (relatively) nice rather than games which play and perform well and it's easier to make eye-candy than high-quality gameplay experiences.

I think the thing is that the mainstream audience knows and consciously understands that they want better graphics. They don't know that they want 60fps, but they do subconsciously recognise that it plays better than 30fps, even if they couldn't put their finger on what the difference is exactly. And because it's more of a subconscious thing, I think a lot of developers underestimate the difference it can make to the play experience.

AFAIK, Call of Duty still aims for 60fps, and they obviously consider it an important part of the magic formula to keep going to that much trouble during development. Maybe everybody else should look at their gajillion sales and consider that perhaps they are right to consider it important.

Good, we don't want games to start looking like soap operas.

No, next-gen consoles won't have Pixar quality graphics, they won't have instant loading times, and not all games will run at 60 fps. Just like the last consoles, and the ones before that.

I just don't see it, Carmack made a pretty terrible game with Rage that was poorly ported to consoles, doesnt mean everyone will.

If we're talking a ROCK SOLID 30, with no stuttering and tearing I think I could handle that.

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

I just don't see it, Carmack made a pretty terrible game with Rage that was poorly ported to consoles, doesnt mean everyone will.

It's not terrible, just... limited.

yeah I was gonna say more advanced shaders, models and AI are really what's going to make the next gen next gen. They will most likely want to push those things to the limit which is around 30 fps for playable games.

I think the 30 FPS and 720p are different ballparks. I was with Carmack on this until he mentioned 720p. I doubt games will stay there and do think most if not all will be at 1080p.

The 30FPS argument has to do with the work put into the game, optimization. You can do more work to get the games to 60fps but usually to make deadlines and not have inconsistency, it is easier and often the case to go with 30fps. 720p however is something that is done at the beginning and really don't think games would go to 720 unless they want them to run at 60fps. This is the case with Call of Duty where they lower the resolution to get a higher frame rate.

As long as they have graphics I don't care. I want to see every leaf on the tree, not just half of them. I only play to see all them. Thank you.

@TheHBK said:

I think the 30 FPS and 720p are different ballparks. I was with Carmack on this until he mentioned 720p. I doubt games will stay there and do think most if not all will be at 1080p.

The 30FPS argument has to do with the work put into the game, optimization. You can do more work to get the games to 60fps but usually to make deadlines and not have inconsistency, it is easier and often the case to go with 30fps. 720p however is something that is done at the beginning and really don't think games would go to 720 unless they want them to run at 60fps. This is the case with Call of Duty where they lower the resolution to get a higher frame rate.

Everyone lowers their resolution, not just Call of Duty.

I don't think the 720p thing was actually part of Carmack's original quote, but I still agree with it. At the end of the day, TV commercials and the like are going to run at <= 30, and upscaling and anti aliasing is getting so good that for most people (including myself) its really hard to notice on a big television far away what resolution something is actually being run at.

Its unfortunate, but a large combination of factors mean that most games will still target 30fps at 720p, even on better hardware.

1080p 30 fps will be the standard, I predict. There might be a few full 60 fps games, but I feel like they'll be pretty few and far between. Games will look a hell of a lot better though, so that's a plus. The fact of the matter is, most people don't understand or instantly appreciate 60fps. Also it's really hard to market to most people.

The extra horse-power is going to be used to make games look nicer, as Jeff said on the Bombcast; the general audience will not recognise the difference and will bemoan the game looking slightly shabbier in order for developers to achieve 60 FPS.

For consoles, 30 fps as opposed to 60 doesnt make that big a difference. Only in racing games that give a good sense of speed the difference actually influences the general user's experience. It matters less in (graphically) slower moving games because of the way console games are controlled, ie. analog sticks. They lack precision or snappiness by design. The added sense of sluggishness 30fps brings to the table might still be noticeable, but it really is insignificant compared to the sluggishness that's there by default due to the game being controlled with an analog controller.

Using a mouse allows for way more precision, controlwise. So on PC, a game's snappiness is generally dictated by the framerate. On a console, not so much.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't to say pc's are superior and consoles suck, they're just different ballgames. Ever since the original Halo console devs (for shooters, anyway) figured out how to compensate for the fact consoles use analog sticks and not the snappier mouse and keyboard. They just made the gameplay slower in general. And it works fine.

One should note, however, that at 30fps it's pretty key that the framerate does not drop lower still. 30 is pretty much the low end of what framerate suffices the playing of any game. Once it drops below 25, the video put out will actually be noticeably jittery to most people, at which point not only the slightly more sluggish 'feel' controlwise, but also the visual experience starts to suffer.

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

I just don't see it, Carmack made a pretty terrible game with Rage that was poorly ported to consoles, doesnt mean everyone will.

I don't think you realize what a technical achievement Rage was. Maybe it was a bad game, but it was one of the greatest technical achievements of this console generation. How many other games run at a locked 60 fps on consoles while often running at native 720p? Not many and none of them look half as good as Rage.

It wouldn't surprise me if console devs target 30 frames per second. Expecting a target resolution of 720p on the second generation HD consoles is what strikes me.

Just give me a solid vsynced 30 fps at a 720p native output from the game, at least.

PLEEEEASSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEE!

I've never been able to tell the difference between 30fps & 60fps. Then again I hardly ever even notice screen tearing. Never saw it once in Alan Wake. Hopefully we will be able to get consistent 30fps next gen, but that won't be happening at launch.

@Demoskinos said:

@Bourbon_Warrior

I just don't see it, Carmack made a pretty terrible game with Rage that was poorly ported to consoles, doesnt mean everyone will.

That shit ran at 60 on consoles. Ill give you that RAGE is a boring ass game but fuck I was impressed that it ran as well as it did on consoles.

It had the most distracting texture pop-in I have seen in a game, I think he's crazy I'm expecting 1080p 60FPS games with DX11 features. Otherwise why would I upgrade, if it's 720p with 30fps the graphics cant look that much different if it is staying at 720p.

Sad thing is, as I get older and everyone's watching things in 8K and 500fps with 18.2 surround, my eyes are going to be working at closer to VGA resolution and my ears in mono!

@MoleyUK said:

Sad thing is, as I get older and everyone's watching things in 8K and 500fps with 18.2 surround, my eyes are going to be working at closer to VGA resolution and my ears in mono!

Let's hope we have augmented eyes and ears before we reach that level of deterioration.

Uh, no shit?
 
The writer assuming that this means 720p should also be the expectation is a little bit dumb though.

I could care less of what that guy thinks. He hasn't made a quality game in 10 years. To say he is out of touch with current gaming would be saying it nicely.

Next gen will be exactly like this gen with better graphics. Some games will run at 60, some 30, and some will get rates that drop into the 20 range.

Come on guys, we always knew that this was the most likely outcome, stop trying to fool yourselves. 30 frames per second is ALWAYS going to be the standard.

Man, I don't give a fuck. I just want to play games.

I would prefer 720p with 60 fps over 1080p with 30 fps any day.

That article is total bollocks, he never said that they would target 720p, just 30fps. I don't see how in any world targetting 30fps implies a resolution of only 720p. That author deserves a slapping.

In regards to his actual statement, yes that makes total sense. 30fps will still probably be the target, otherwise games won't look any better next gen than they already do... There is no fucking way consoles can be anywhere near $500 dollars and look better, run at 60fps AND be 1080p. One of those has to be cut, at least. And framerate is where it hurts least.

Get your expectations set right guys, or prepare to be disappointed.

@TheHBK said:

I think the 30 FPS and 720p are different ballparks. I was with Carmack on this until he mentioned 720p. I doubt games will stay there and do think most if not all will be at 1080p.

Except he never said that.

@Spoonman671 said:

Uh, no shit? The writer assuming that this means 720p should also be the expectation is a little bit dumb though.

This. People need to actually read the article and not just take whatever the author wrote as fact.

Smart developers will continue to find ways to makes games look and run well whether it be on a console, PC, or some sort of handheld device.