sc94597 said:
Eh, performance mode patches are pretty standard these days, even in large-scale open-world titles. Pipelining in development exists to reduce the man-hour scenario. Testers can test things in parallel as they wait for new content to be produced, as can developers as they wait for QA results. I do realize we're talking about Bethesda though -- a company that outsources a lot of its patching to the mod community then uses the results to create a dozen "editions" of the same title. |
Priority in a pipeline is orientated around opportunity cost, the reward of actually taking on a task.
There are probably 100 of things that will be ahead of a unstable 60fps mode. And again, you're not talking about a reliable 60fps mode, you're talking about a mode which at least hits 45fps for VRR users which is simply not valuable for the vast majority of Xbox gamers who do not have a VRR display. Such a mode will be at the bottom of the bucket list for a game like Starfield which in terms of testing will be magnitudes higher than probably all of the games you're seeing launch with performance modes.
And I feel like people are throwing around "open world" comparisons a lot recently as if they're all made the same. Simply having a sandbox does not make a game incredibly complex. Beyond loading environments, A game like Horizon or Spiderman (for example) is probably closer to a single player title like TLOU compared to something like Starfield. They're not games where half the objects you come across have a physics component, can be picked up, stored, utililised, with 1000s of NPCs and their dynamic impact on the environment & story being managed in real time. Its really apples and oranges. I won't give Bethesda a pass for launching games in a buggy state, but I also think people are doing the kind of games they make a disservice by comparing them to otherwise linear sandbox games or last gen/cross gen titles.
