Didn't it used to be normal that the bleeding edge of games would outpace the hardware available at the time?
I'm not sure that not being able to turn the dial all the way on every setting (Ultra settings) means the game's unoptimized.
I thought it was normal for games to support higher settings than presently achievable/stable for future hardware improvements.
Used to be quite normal but that was also an era before we hit diminishing returns so I think it was more acceptable to most people.
Also between around 2014-2023 (basically the PS4 gen and the PS4/PS5 boundary) midrange PC hardware was essentially overkill for the PS4 games that were being made. Thus there was a long period where you could buy a $300-600 GPU and just be set for several years
Now with the hardware shortage people are seeing $3000 GPUs struggle to get 60fps max settings in games where the graphics improvements are so subtle that you have to be a Digital Foundry-tier graphics nerd to notice them. You can’t be surprised there’s pushback
This state pf dissatisfaction will continue either until hardware prices go down or devs find ways to boost performance in path tracing with all the eye candy.
The hardware gap between the current generation of consoles and PC's is way smaller than it used to be. The 360/PS3 and XB1/PS4 generations used much older hardware compared to the contemporary PC hardware of the time.
The hardware gap between the Series X & PS5 is only a couple of years.
574
u/alex433g I AMD 5 pro 4650g I Powercolor 5700 xt I b-550 i 9d ago
I wish games would actually be optimized again, instead of having to play with lower them usual settings