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curl-6 on 12 January 2016
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midrange said:
curl-6 said:
midrange said:

Framerate is definitely big. Playing mario kart 8 at 60 fps with more than 2 people would be great. Playing xenoblade X at 60 fps would be phenomenal. Same for third party games.

In these instances, I think developer priorities were more the deciding factors than hardware power.

On PS4 spec hardware, Monolith probably still would have run XCX at 30fps, just probably at 1080p with less aggressive LOD and better textures/shaders.

Both could have been 60fps on Wii U if the devs had made it a priority, but they opted for 30fps instead. These priorities would likely remain the same even with more capable hardware.

It is up to the developer, but I actually think Nintendo would strive for 60 fps on mario kart. They seem to really be focused on 60 fps on every other game (compromising frame rate in certain situations), which leads me to believe that we wouldn't have these frame-rate compromises if Nintendo had stronger tech work with.

Even on Wii U they could have made 3-4 player splitscreen 60fps if they'd cut back on the visual fidelity. You're right that they clearly place a lot of value on 60fps, as they shoot for it in most of their games, but they are also some cases where they choose 30fps; not just in Mario Kart's 3-4 player mode, but also in Splatoon's Gamepad-TV splitscreen multiplayer and plaza, and in Pikmin 3. 

As a sucker for 60fps myself I'd like to see them tone down the eye candy to get 3-4 players running in 60fps, but it just smacks of more a design choice than a hardware limitation to me, given that there are games on weaker hardware that can do 3-4 player splitscreen at 60fps. (E.g. Double Dash on Gamecube)

I guess we won't know until Mario Kart 9 arrives.