The release of WB Games Montreal’s highly-anticipated upcoming game is just around the corner, but it was met with some nagging controversy just before it hit stores. It was recently revealed that Gotham Knights will not run at 60 FPS (animation frames per second) on consoles, as will be capped at 30 FPS on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S and will not owill spawn a ‘performance mode’.
These details were confirmed on the game’s official Discord server. Responding to questions from several gamers, Fleur ‘Flaoua’ Marty – executive producer of this title – revealed the disappointing news and explained the reasons behind it.
According to Marty, the reason why Gotham Knights will run at 30 FPS on PS5 consoles and Xbox Series X|S is “the features of the game”. He explains that “providing a free-for-all co-op experience in a highly detailed open world, it’s not that easy to just lower the resolution to get more frames of animation per second.” This is why the game will not have a ‘performance mode’.
In case you don’t know, ‘performance mode’ is a fairly common option in modern games for PS5 and Xbox Series X | S that allows games to run at 60 FPS or more in exchange for lowering the resolution. In contrast, there is usually the ‘quality mode’ or ‘graphics mode’ that allows you to enjoy them in their highest resolution, usually 4K, limiting performance to 30 FPS.
Community reaction
Although producer Fleur Marty’s reasoning makes sense, the news did not please the players who were waiting for the title. The original statement passed without much pain or glory when it was published on Discord, but “exploded” when it was known on social networks. Harsh criticism, insults and memes against the game immediately began to appear.
In a quick look at Twitter and Reddit there are accusations that the game is “badly optimized”. Others say that “Arkham Knight on ps4 it looks better than Gotham Knights on PS5″. There were also jokes that WB Games actually “doesn’t canceled the versions for the last generation, he only released them for the new one ». Others dared to say that it was the fault of the less powerful Xbox Series S that the PS5 and Series X versions could not have performance mode. That gave rise to unjustified criticism against Microsoft.
This “rage” unleashed by the news of the 30 FPS limit of Gotham Knights and lack of ‘performance mode’ on PS5 and Xbox Series X | S is related to the supposed “promise” that all games on current generation consoles would be able to run all their games at at least 60 FPS.
Gotham Knights will go on sale on Tuesday, October 25, 2022.
