Why doesn't Ubisoft try to optimize their PC versions?

Because everybody else does. Even COD this year is running well. DA Inquisition is a good version, apparently

But Ubisoft seems to **** it up non stop nowadays. Sure, there's some outliners. The 30fps lock on NFS Rivals. The Evil Within's issues, but it was açsp problematic on consoles. FFXIII was a terrible port, but after VC, Square seems to be putting some effort into it.

If the PC port of GTA V and Destiny (very liekly) are also of good quality, it would put Ubisoft with the worst track record of bad pc version from AAA publishers lately.

But why? They have their own digital platform and their games can sell well on PC. I mean, it's not like COD is pc focused nowadays. Why not put the effort in to give proper pc versions so people want to buy them?

On the other hand, it seems they're not even trying with console versions either

Probably because their games run like shit on all platforms. Far Cry 4 wasn't that bad of a port.

Because a long time ago before Steam was a thing, and PC piracy was a big problem, Ubisoft decided "**** all PC pirates", and has since made shit PC ports not ever taking the time to consider that in today's market, now that Steam IS a thing, and PC is more popular than ever, that if they'd simply make good ports they'd reap the benefits.

They're still stuck in the mindset of 2002.

I think you meant to say, "Why doesn't Ubisoft try to optimise their games"

The thing is, the console versions, besides Unity, are "well optimized". Atleast enough. Sure, WD should have been 1080p/900p. And FC4's AA solution seems to create some bluriness.

But they run at locked 30fps, with high settings and without noticeable issues.

FC4 has fantastic performance optimization and a greta deal of options on PC. But suffers from horrible stuttering, probably caused by the bad multi threading.

And that's FC4. Let's nto talk about all the AC games and WD.

Far Cry 3 and 4 were good ports and were well optimized. At least for Nvidia cards. Their third person open world games, Watch Dogs and AC, were unoptimized because there's just so much shit to deal with, I doubt it would be worth the effort.

I',m not trolling, but I really think the game is going to get pirated more than it will sell, so why bother putting the time and money in to do it right.

my friend experience no stuttering in playing FC4

Eh.....hard to optimize when PCs aren't all the same.

SSD and or multiple harddrives?

ppl luv pirating ubisoft games

I forgot since when this trend started, but I know it like exploded after some dev or manager was saying BS about piracy

As of the last two days, neither do my PC.

They want to avoid world war 3 between fanboys

To point this out, i'm not saying it's happening to everyone. I wasn't getting that much stuttering on WD after putting textures on high instead of the 3GB ultra ones.

But it does seem to be an big issue for many, including TB and DF,

I'm not saying FC4 is a disaster. Just that, despite the great quality of the performance and options, they still fucked up on cpu core usage.

Apparently, FC3 had a micro stuttering issue aswell on launch, but i picked it up sometime latter and didn't have problem. Hopefully FC4 also gets fixed.

And there's still the matter of WD and AC. Does anybody have hopes for The Division and R6 to not be messed up.

because they are lax and greedy.

Why would they waste the time when they know the game will just be pirated?

That's just stup............oh wait, it's you

They have three options. Option one is delay the release of the entire game on all platforms. Option two is to delay just the PC version for further QA. Option three is to release the game on all platforms to hit their chosen release date (that was probably picked by some group of "experts" that determined which day would be the best to launch).

Considering that console versions of Ubisoft's games are still the biggest money makers, the PC audience is still the smallest, and upsetting PC gamers does not have a huge ripple effect on console sales, Ubisoft execs probably don't care and just have their devs push out games on the targeted release date. Instead of just flat out saying it how it is, their PR or the people in charge constantly try to find some reason like piracy to blame for them not releasing proper ports. They won't be honest with us to say that the PC versions don't make them a lot of money and despite releasing broken games sales of their games don't seem to drop by enough to make it uneconomical to support the platform.

I've also heard of some rumors that the higher ups have convinced themselves that the PC is an extremely toxic environment. Partly from the pirating they see on the platform but also partly from the hostile consumer base. The loudest people on the internet have always been PC gamers.

Only TXAA does this. The MSAA and SMAA solutions do not. Overall, I am fairly pleased with the performance of FC4. I am especially happy that the godrays can be enabled even with an AMD GPU, as they REEEAAALLLY, RREEEAALLLY improve the overall look of the game (if you find it desaturates the image too much turn it down to the volumetric fog setting). The stuttering is annoying, but doesn't ruin the game imo, especially as it's not too noticeable when on foot.

@Heil68 It's been the top seller on steam since its release, so there's obviously some people buying it. I don't blame people for pirating it though....after the fiasco with Unity, I can understand why some would want to try it before they buy.

Well I thought I read a rumor that had them saying as much, but obliviously PC games sell. Diablo 3 sold what 10 million?

@cfisher2833: Was refering to the console's unique AA solution lookign a some DF pics and NeoGaf comparisons. But that's a minor point anyway, so sorry for any confusion.

I get your point Wasdie.

But COD sells much more an consoles and got a great port this year. Let's do a hypothetical for a moment and say the GTA V and Destiny ports, considering they sell much more consoles, end up being good. That would put R* and Activision, which aren't known for the best pc versions (MP3 was good on my rig atleast) would have better quality on pc than Ubisoft.

Sure, PC may not be the biggest seller for Assassin's Creed, but Unity was a top seller on Steam for a while. And DD profits margins are great too.

I believe PC makes up about 20% of Ubisofts profit overall. It may not be as large, but i dont' see why that's a reason for their games to continue having such large glaring issues from crashes, to stutteringm to frame rate locking at 60 (atleast for me)

Then again, like i saidm even the console versions are having problems nowadays

The people running Ubisoft are not good people. Or smart. Apparently, because there are a lot of pirated versions being downloaded, they are going to punish paying customers, while also gleefully pocketing the money - all the while believing themselves to be the "victim"

Some programmer apparently claimed Microsoft is party behind it - and that wouldn't surprise me. Unlike Sony and Nintendo, they can't make a console desirable on 1st party alone.

Well this is all in addition to the fact that Ubisoft is doing a terrible job of managing their releases. They aren't given devs enough time or resources to develop their games properly and they are clearly over-managing every aspect of development. Stuff like the companion app for Unity is proof that somebody higher up is calling the shots too much and forcing developers to waste time implementing garbage.

In this situation the PC is going to get screwed the worst as it needs the most QA work since the PC is an incredibly diverse platform itself. When Ubisoft is pushing for a release of their games without delay, the PC version is the one that will suffer the most as the devs aren't going to have the time to do proper QA on it.

Activision has 3 main studios working on 3 versions of CoD with a few studios rotating between projects to help development and polish. This means each CoD game now, starting with Advance Warfare, gets 3 years of development instead of two. The effect was obvious. Aside from a small handful of launch-day bugs on all platforms, CoD AW launched relatively smoothly. No launch of a big multiplayer game is ever going to go perfectly so a few bugs that are quickly addressed is excusable.

Ubisoft is still pushing for 2 year cycles for most of their games. The Division may be the first game of theirs in awhile that gets more than 2 years of dev time.

second fiscal quarter

• PlayStation 4 21%
• PlayStation 3 19%
• PC 17%
• Xbox360 16%
• Xbox One 9%
• Wii 2%
• Wii U 1%
• Vita 1%
• 3DS 1%
• Other 13%

One difference I noticed with stuttering between FC3 and FC4 (on my PC) is that FC3 stuttered with DX9 and at regular/timed intervals even though framerates were pretty high. There was no stuttering at all with DX11. The stuttering on Far Cry 4 was infrequent and only when moving fast. I applied the two .xml file settings which got rid of stuttering altogether. I never had a problem with one core overloading. There are six cores (of my FX-8350) in use when I play the game with a seventh core sometimes showing activity when I ride vehicles. None of them were ever taxed to 100% with nothing going on.

http://static2.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1163/11630370/2742436-fc4+with+task+manager.jpg

I assume Far Cry 4 to be a much more graphically dense version of Far Cry 3. At Ultra, Far Cry 4 stresses my GTX 770 more (compared to Far Cry 3). With Far Cry 4, I don't use 8xMSAA or 4xMSAA unlike in Far Cry 3 where the game is still playable with those AA settings.

In short, Far Cry 4 is par for the course to me.

@Wasdie: You make great points. I just think it's stupid how it seems to be a constant theme with their large budget IPs.

FC4 is what's shocking me abit considering the stuttering existed on the launch version of FC3.

btw, isn't The Division being worked on by some kind of second party type team? Or is it a full internal Ubisoft team?

@TheFadeForever said:

Thanks for the chart. Insane how ti usd to be 27% and half in 1 year.

@deadline-zero0 said:

@Wasdie: You make great points. I just think it's stupid how it seems to be a constant theme with their large budget IPs.

FC4 is what's shocking me abit considering the stuttering existed on the launch version of FC3.

btw, isn't The Division being worked on by some kind of second party type team? Or is it a full internal Ubisoft team?

@TheFadeForever said:

Thanks for the chart. Insane how ti usd to be 27% and half in 1 year.

Probably because of poor WD port

Fyi Sledgehammer did a poor job with CoD this year even though it was fun for a CoD game, in fact I have't played it in two weeks cause of the issues it had. DA3 is probably a little better in the optimization department compared to CoD, Unity, Watch Dogs and Far Cry 4, at least Bioware released patches pretty quickly along with Nvidia driver updates

They prefer to put in as little work as possible in order to get the game out on schedule and will always blame pirates for being half-assed.

better games (better optimized) sell more on PC than a crappy port or a total mess like BF4, those games dont cost all that much, 1 dollar spent on optimizing a already build game can make 100x $ return on sales, i hope thats why gtav is getting delayed

Far Cry 4 PC is an awful port, are you kidding me? No direct mouse input, 16:9 only, weird performance problems (tons of users w/ high end setups experiencing stuttering, including myself), Uplay required (2x DRM if you're running Steam), and a million other smaller annoying problems.

At the same level as AC Unity? No, it might not be the best port but runs way better than Unity. Obviously its going to be mix with many users. I heard many postive feedbacks from pcgamer so not everyone consider it anywhere near bad.

they're assholes

90%-95% of piracy and still 20% average of total ubisoft sales are on PC?

if you consider that the paying PC players (5-10%) represent 20% of total sales, it would mean that PC total player count (paying and not paying) are equivalent to 200% up to 400% of the ubisoft sales numbers

lets say that FC4 sale 5 millions on all platforms, if piracy numbers are real, PC total players would be up to 20 millions, thats a bit hard to believe, 20 million players with high end PCs for every big game released, it would be like PC is 10X bigger than consoles

Because their games are so optimized on consoles. That 900p and 30 fps

What was wrong with your AW pc version? I didn't buy it, but everyone from DF, to TB, to DSO, to Linus, to overall gamer impressions point to a very solid pc version.

Ubisoft works their developers like slaves and enforces stringent production deadlines. As a result not a lot of effort is put into optimization and polish. It has little to do with piracy and more to do with Ubisoft being a terrible company deadset on churning out rehashes of their AAA franchises every year.

Because they don't feel like they need to. Then they get bit in the ass and the next title is optimized. It's a perpetual cycle that we consumers allow them to continue with.

Black Flag ran pretty good. Don't know about Unity.

Probably because they make more money off console releases. Isn't it like 90% of pc releases get pirated?

I blame nvidia, every company they partner with always shits out an unoptimized mess. It's probably a tactic to sell expensive higher end cards.

100% of all games get pirated on all platforms.

It's not optimized on any system. Console version barely runs at 30 fps on low-medium....PC version can hit 60 fps constant on high-ultra.

lol Nvidia has nothing to do with the optimization state of games. They pay publishers to use their tech/programing, so they can promote. UBi 100% the problem

Wut?

What does Square have to do with Valkyria Chronicles?

Because they are a garbage company with garbage devs?