The Division (PC)

Furnace Inferno

Well I think that is being a bit optimistic, see Watchdogs and Witcher 3 for proof of that, they are going to work off of one asset base that can work across all platforms so the reveal footage is gone now.

Certainly the PC version will look better than the E3 2015 PS4 footage just not 2013 good, the removal of real time GI from everything from FF Agnis to UE4 saw of any hope of any of those games reaching the same graphics quality disappear. It will probably be the next-gen when we are able to move to proper lighting as a baseline which was meant to happen this gen until Sony/MS went all low power APU rubbish.

alphaomega16

Goddamn consoles ruining everything again, just make a PC game and port it with low graphics settings to consoles, job done.

Furnace Inferno

To be fair not many PC's could do real time GI either, if it took the fastest single GPU at the time just to run around 30fps it was never really going to happen. Can you imagine a game releasing now with the minimum spec being a GTX980Ti just for 1080p/30fps, it doesn't matter how good it looked there would be far more complaining from people not able to play it than those complaining about the Watchdogs downgrade because far more people have low-mid range PC's than those with high end.

The main issue is you basically need two different games from the point that you add textures and lighting because you can't add something like SVOGI to a game that has already had everything tweaked for baked GI and vice-versa. The whole point of moving to real time solutions was it was meant to reduce production times as artists didn't need to go in and tweak every scene to get the right look but now they have created PBR instead as a halfway house.

alphaomega16

Then they shouldnt show anything to do with games until they can make videos from live playable content.

Qactuar

In fairness, no - that's crazy.

They could be honest though and say "look, here's the game, but final polish may differ - we're running on "x" which is looking great, but we want everyone to have a perfect experience"

If you don't show fans/investors what is forthcoming, you lose investment and the ability to finish games. It can work both ways, but simply saying "well you shouldn't until it's perfect" is not really fair.

Games are MADE on PC's in the first place. Consoles have different capabilities, sure - but simply making two different games isn't that easy. Or they'd do it, wouldn't they? Look at how long the GTA5 port to PC took.

kav

That's one advantage about the current generation of consoles - they're all running similar architecture to PCs. Theoretically at least, porting from one to the other should be more straightforward.

Qactuar

"Should" being the key modal verb there

Cha1ky

I'm sure the original footage was meant to be running on a PS4???

Furnace Inferno

Never believe those lies, Forza 5 was said to be running on actual Xbox One consoles and yet somehow a few months later got massively downgraded.....

Trust no one because in the end it's just marketing 101 but notice now that they do HAVE to put in 'in-engine footage' or 'alpha footage' to cover their arses from legal issues when the retail game doesn't match it.

aslird

I imagine most of the footage is pre-rendered stuff, which can in theory run on a potato if they show it in video form.  You only need to look at all the fake gameplay footage from E3 over the past couple of years to know that it isn't "live" gameplay.  Even the Battlefield stuff isn't live footage, it is all edited and cleaned up for the cameras.