60FPS Isn’t That Important, Says Developer

In our quest to get you more coverage for games that are not quite in the spotlight, we have contacted HB Studios to talk about their upcoming sports title, The Golf Club. The game is already available on Steam via Early Access, but it’s also scheduled for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and as such, we inquired about possible cross-platform play and it sounds like it could happen, according to Producer Anthony Kyne.

Yeah, we hope so. We’re quite far along in talks with both Sony and Microsoft and they’re very keen to make sure it happens. We’ve just got to prove out the flow of the content and our ability to manage any offensive content. Microsoft and Sony have no control over Steam users so if someone is creating something that is not family friendly they want us to prove to them that we can make sure we are on top of it. We’ve proposed a system, so we’re just waiting to hear back now.

While they wouldn’t commit to a specific resolution for the console versions, we got a pretty strong statement about the widespread topic of 60FPS in gaming: their opinion is that it’s not that important.

60fps  is something that’s always banded around but I was reading recently that the brain can hardly tell the difference between anything over about 35fps.

My opinion is, if it feels right and it’s not chugging you’re good. Trying to hit this mythical number, for small gain, when you could be using the time to improve the overall experience of the game isn’t that important in my opinion.

They also dismissed the talk about technological differences between PS4 and Xbox One, adding that more powerful now doesn’t mean it will stay that way, and ultimately gameplay always comes first.

You can never tell how things will develop over a generations life cycle, more powerful now doesn’t mean it will stay that way. As developers become more clever with the low level libraries, things become quicker and look better. It seems that the focus of most gamers has changed back to gameplay anyway so it’s all about which system has the most fun games coming out. Some of the biggest hits from the last year aren’t anything amazing graphically, but the game play is getting people talking and with the shift to digital purchasing away from in-store purchasing, word of mouth is just as important as big budget marketing

Come back tomorrow for our full interview on The Golf Club.