“Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time will probably be Insomniac’s last 60fps game,” writes the studio’s Mike Acton, who examined improved framerate and concluded that it does little to drive purchases or good reviews.
Acton says Insomniac’s community team took a look at the reviews of 47 top-notch games and found that while “there was a clear correlation between graphics scores in reviews and the final scores,” there’s no correlation between framerate and the graphics scores. In other words, good graphics make the game feel more fun to play, but whether it’s 30 fps or 60 fps doesn’t matter.
Take a look at his entire post; Acton gets into the studio’s philosophy of what is and what isn’t important, visually. And it’s clear that 60 fps, despite the fact “one of the long-standing sacred cows here at Insomniac is framerate,” is not going to be the holy grail of their development. In fact, it’ll probably be 30 fps from now on.
How Much Does Framerate Matter? [Insomniac Games Blog]
nicholas
Friday, October 30, 2009 at 4:51 PMWhat is wrong with 40 fps?
Sam Batty
Friday, October 30, 2009 at 4:59 PMabsolute rubbish, 60fs is very important to me as a gamer (though not essential).
60fps should be standard now, we’ve had it in games since the n64 days!
Michael
Friday, October 30, 2009 at 6:07 PMI dunno…In racing games, fighting games and others that require precise timing and movement it’s pretty important for the game to run along at a solid 60fps. For a platformer like Ratchet and Clank though I guess they can get away with 30fps. But it depends on the game.
Joshy206
Friday, October 30, 2009 at 6:08 PMGood on ‘em. If it gets the game out quicker, or lets the devs spend more time on the actual gameplay, who cares?
legless joe
Friday, October 30, 2009 at 6:46 PMYour saying that 60fps is very important, but look at it from another point of view.
Insomniac never said that graphics had to suffer greatly and in reality, in these times, the company is probably looking for ways to improve production and decrease work time, if a company like insomniac feels like they need to reduce frame rate then they should do it.
That is not to say that i aggree with the stance as a gamer, but from a business perspective, it make sense.
Timothy Zeven
Monday, November 2, 2009 at 1:19 AMIt doesn’t help that Grand Theft Auto 4 had some of the worst framerate issues ever, and yet still sold like crazy.
It would truly be a loss if R&C went sub 50fps, the high fps really helped immerse you in the action. Check out the wikipedia article on the subject of high framerate and its effect on perception http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_motion