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Glen Schofield: 60 FPS Is Call of Duty's "Competitive Edge"
The Sledgehammer Games president takes a not-so-veiled shot at rival Battlefield 3.
When AusGamers asked Glen Schofield if Activision needed to upgrade Call of Duty's technology in the face of Battlefield 3's impressive new Frostbite 2 engine, the developer defended the aging engine by pointing to a feature he perceives to be a trump card for the franchise – frames per second.
"You can go out and name your engine and call it whatever you want, right?" he said. "You know, I’ve done that before; I’ve seen that trick and the bottom line is, [Modern Warfare 3] will run at 60 frames a second. Not sure any of our competitors will. Not sure I’ve seen any of our competitors on the console especially running at 60 frames a second and I’d be a little scared at this point – in June – if I was looking forward to a particular game that wasn’t on the console and running at 60. And I think 60 is our competitive edge, and you just don’t throw that away."
Just last week, DICE rendering architect Johan Andersson confirmed to Develop that the console versions of Battlefield 3 will run at 30 FPS in order to account for the large sense of scale, vehicular warfare, and destructible environments – basically all the differentiating factors that separate the Battlefield series from the Call of Duty series. This is the same framerate players experienced in Bad Company 2.
Schofield also touted Call of Duty's revamped engine and new audio system, which he says is "as competitive as anybody out there." Considering the Grand Canyon sized gulf between the sound quality of previous Call of Duty games and the Bad Company series, this is a long overdue improvement.
What's your take? Do frames per second make or break an online shooter in your opinion?
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