Lately we’ve been talking about games not performing well enough on current hardware. It’s had me wondering just what we should be asking for. I think the basic principle is that components from the last 5 years should be adequate to play current-generation titles at 1080p60. Not at max settings, of course, but certainly playable without resorting to DLSS and FSR.

It makes me wonder: is it really so much to ask? There are games from 10+ years ago that still look great or at least acceptable. Should we expect new games like Starfield to be configurable to be as demanding as an older game like Portal 2 or CS:GO. If the gameplay is what really matters, and games of the 2010s looked good then, why can’t we expect current games to be configurable that low?

From what I’ve seen, users of the GTX 1070 need to play Starfield at 720p with FSR to get 60fps. What’s better? Getting 60fps by playing at 720p with FSR, or playing at 1080p with reduced texture resolution and model detail?

It shouldn’t even be that hard to pull off. It should be possible to automatically create lower detail models and textures, and other details can just be turned off.

  • @[email protected]English
    2•1 year ago

    The silly thing is that it can run it perfectly fine on a ten years old cellphone, but my 5 years old pc has trouble.

    Anyway the point is that people play what they can play (Roblox,Amongus, etc.), so the question of what minimum requirements are expectable really depends on how many players the developer wants. While technology constantly advances, the market base for games with high requirements is dropping, because most gamers don’t upgrade their hardware as often as they used to.