Opinion: Why we expect more from full-price game performance

Why do some companies get a pass when substandard work is delivered, while others are held to a different standard? This is an opinion and discussion piece, prompted by our experience with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and what we had been seeing of Dragon’s Dogma 2.

We were playing through Rebirth without loving or hating it, but its presentation was a constant distraction. Quality mode targets 30fps, while the 60fps performance mode looked unacceptably blurry to us. We wanted to understand why the trade-off had to feel so severe.

Watching streams of Dragon’s Dogma 2 raised a similar frustration. From our perspective, the performance being shown on high-end PC hardware, including an RTX 4090, was difficult to accept from a company like Capcom.

We are not comparing games one-to-one. Still, MGSV remains an important reference point for us: it looked great and ran superbly across multiple platforms. New games have access to newer hardware, tools, and technology, yet performance continues to be a recurring disappointment.

That matters when new releases ask us to spend $70 or more. We love both Square Enix and Capcom, but affection for a studio does not remove the expectation of a polished experience. “Good enough” deserves scrutiny when players are paying full price.

The discussion afterwards

In our replies, we acknowledged that our view of the reaction was shaped by what we saw on X. We had mostly encountered discussion of microtransactions and had missed some performance criticism on other platforms. We were happy to acknowledge that limitation and be corrected.

We also agreed that the growing size and scope of AAA games can become unsustainable. More modest projects with more reasonable timelines could be worth considering. Our criticism comes from wanting better games, and we value people willing to share knowledge and challenge our assumptions.

Sources

Our original opinion — March 24, 2024

Our clarification on the discussion we had seen
Our acknowledgement of the correction
Our note on missing discussion beyond X
Our response on being open to correction
Our thoughts on smaller games and realistic timelines