Insomniac games developer Mike Acton who did some market research of his own to find out whether frame rate affects sales or reviews of games and observed a weak correlation between the two. He wrote on his official blog, “One of the long-standing sacred cows here at Insomniac is framerate. We’ve long viewed a solid framerate as both a sign of a quality product and professionalism as developers. It’s always been point of pride in our work and considered an extremely serious part of our development process.”
“However, during development, there are hard choices to be made between higher quality graphics and framerate. And we want to make the right choices that reflect our commitment to providing you with the best looking games out there.”
The community team’s findings suggest that a higher framerate does not significantly affect a game’s sales, nor does it affect revew scores. However, graphics do have a significant impact on the final review score, and can even affect the gameplay, with gamers perceiving better looking games to be “more fun.”
Insomniac has come to the conclusion that framerate is “important, but not critically so. When there is a clear choice between framerate and improved graphics, graphics should win. The correlation with review scores is clear.”
So what does all that mean? According to Acton, “It means that framerate is still important to us here at Insomniac, but it’s not on the same pedestal it was before. And that Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time will probably be Insomniac’s last 60 fps game.”
What do you think? Would you trade silky smooth 60 fps frame rate for better looking graphics at 30 fps?
