60Fps - is it really that important?

[NightDragon83]

MikeRox said:

Shadow1980 said:

Apparently, 99.99% of 3D polygon-based games released between 1995 and 2005 were unplayable, because only a tiny number of them ran at 60 fps. Interestingly enough, at least a plurality of gamers seem to consider the PS2 their favorite console, despite a minuscule fraction of its games running at 60fps. Even last generation 60fps wasn't the norm. For some reason, in the past couple of years 60fps for console games became the Holy Grail of Gaming, that one goal that every game should strive, a goal more important than any other.

Yet I have to ask: "Why?" For many years gamers were fine playing games that ran at 30fps. The vast majority of games I've played over the past 20 years ran at 30fps (sometimes less for fifth-gen games). I think the only fifth- or sixth-gen games I played that were 60fps were F-Zero X and Soul Calibur. Last generation the only 60fps games I played were Soul Calibur IV, Bayonetta, several COD games (COD2, COD4, & Black Ops), and several first-party Nintendo games. This generation, the only 60fps games I own are Battlefield 4, the MCC and Halo 5, and several Nintendo games. I've honestly noticed no real benefit going from 30fps to 60fps. All the Halo games ran perfectly fine and were perfectly playable at 30fps, and I don't feel like 60fps was any real improvement for the series; in fact, 343i's commitment to 60fps may have been a contributing factor to the loss of split-screen. Old sixth-gen games played perfectly fine at 30fps as well.

But I will say that, at least for certain kinds of games, I just don't care for 60fps. While it doesn't seem to bother me much with platformers, fighting games, and racing games, FPSs and third-person shooters/action games running at 60fps has always bugged me. When I played COD games on the 360 I always thought they felt unnaturally smooth. When I got TLoU: Remastered for the PS4, the 60fps mode likewise looked unnaturally smooth, so I had to switch the frame rate to 30fps. It took me weeks to adjust to 60fps Halo when I got the MCC, and even now after a year it just seems... odd much of the time.

EDIT: Y'know, I'd actually like for some kind of study to be done to see if gamers experience on average better overall performance in a game running at 60fps vs. a game running at 30fps. If there is no measurable difference, then the "60fps plays better" argument would seem to be largely illusory.

Funny you put this. It was actually the 6th generation consoles that made me care about 60fps. Plenty of Dreamcast games ran at 60fps. Same for PS2. It's actually become far less common since the 7th gen.

A big part of that is likely the shift of focus of gaming from arcade games.

Even most of the Dreamcast and PS2 launch titles were all 60fps. So I don't get where this myth that it's a recent thing comes from.

While some of those games did indeed run at 60fps, like you said many of them were arcade games so they weren't exactly pushing new boundaries in the visuals department either.  Crazy Taxi and Soul Caliber for example were ports of arcade games, and then you had PS2 launch titles like Ridge Racer V which while running at 60fps was also a jaggy mess like most early PS2 games were...

 

Very few games that generation managed to really impress visually while holding a rock solid 60fps.  F-Zero GX is one of the few titles that comes to mind that actually accomplished this...