Gamers in the blog-o-sphere are starting to express contempt over what looks like a purposeful limitation of framerate on Destiny 2 for the PlayStation 4 Pro. Developer Bungie has said that the first-person shooter will be held at 30 frames per second on Sony’s new high-end console, but some believe that it isn’t due a hardware limitation. And so the great debate over being able to play Destiny 2 at the maximum of 60 frames per second or 4K begins.
Is the PlayStation 4 Pro capable of running Destiny 2 at 60FPS?
Bungie developers told IGN recently that the PlayStation 4 Pro simply isn’t capable of running the game at 60FPS because of constraints on its CPU. However, the folks at wccftech have several reasons they believe the console can indeed pull it off.
They argue that while 4K at 60FPS would be very difficult to achieve because Destiny 2 is such a high-performance, competitive game, but 1080p at 60FPS should be possible on the PlayStation 4 Pro. They feel the developer should sacrifice resolution instead of framerate, rather than the other way around, which is what some believe is happening.
After all, games such as Rainbow Six: Siege, Halo 5: Guardians, Titanfall 2, Overwatch, DOOM, Gears of War 4, and others all are capable of running at 60FPS. According to wccftech, Destiny 2 is the only first-person shooter game still running at 30FPS, as all the other big names are at 60. In fact, the games have clocked 60FPS on the Xbox One and original PlayStation 4, and the PlayStation 4 Pro offers even more powerful hardware than them.
Holding back the PlayStation 4 Pro because of Xbox One?
The prevailing speculation as to why Destiny 2 is being held to 30FPS on the PlayStation 4 Pro is that Sony and Microsoft have for some reason agreed to keep the framerates for multiplayer games the same across consoles. However, Microsoft VP Mike Ybarra stated this week that there is no such agreement and it is the developers that decide what framerate their games will run at. And wccftech adds that Sony has offered enough examples of multiplayer games that allow players to choose what framerate and resolution they want on the PlayStation 4 Pro.
It doesn’t make sense for developers to set such limits either because it would mean that they’re essentially penalizing players who shelled out big bucks for better hardware. Further, PC gamers have long been dealing with the issue of different framerates. Most will come across gamers who have better PCs capable of running games at higher framerates, which enable them to beat those who have weaker PCs running games at lower framerates. In the case of two excellent gamers, sometimes it’s the performance of the hardware that determines the winner.
So why the limit on Destiny 2 for PlayStation 4?
Wccftech argues that the most likely reason for the limit is the game engine that was used to build Destiny 2. More than one gaming blog has noted the similarities between the original Destiny game and its sequel, and a lot of those similarities could be attributed to the same or a very similar game engine being used for both. The original game ran on all platforms at 30FPS, so perhaps Bungie decided not to invest in an overhaul for the game engine for the sequel.
Others, like Hot Hardware, point to the expected delay in the PC version of Destiny 2 and suggest a connection with the framerate limit on the PlayStation 4 Pro. As already mentioned, PC gamers have long been accustomed to dealing with framerate differences between their systems and the systems of their competitors. But whatever the reason, there’s enough heat over this question that Bungie would be advised to be more open about what’s happening or perhaps make an investment and give gamers what they really want.
