Money Influenced Latest Assassin's Creed PC Patch?
TG Daily did some digging and found a bit of controversy surrounding Ubisoft's recent decision to remove DirectX 10.1 functionality from the PC port of their swords and stealth Crusades epic. Certain features of DX10.1 were detrimentally effecting performance of Nvidia cards, while Radeon cards experienced no problems. The latest patch rolls back the engine to DX10, thereby removing the problem, but downgrading the experience for Radeon owners. TG Daily contends that manufacturing partnerships may have been involved in the decision.
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Sadly, this is the way PC gaming is: There is a great game, but it is burdened with technical issues and ends up getting caught in marketing wars. We have no doubt that the development team made a mistake in QA process and integrated a feature that caused instabilities with Nvidia cards. Given Nvidia’s market share, Ubisoft had to patch it. What we do not understand is the reason for an explanation that left more questions than answers.
Where is Altair when you need him to dispense some justice?
I don't see the scandal though. A top-selling card, one that a good percentage of their userbase would be using, has issues with the game. So they fixed it.
I don't see the scandal though. A top-selling card, one that a good percentage of their userbase would be using, has issues with the game. So they fixed it.
Why is that evil?
Well, they fixed it by gimping the performance on the competitor's card. You know... The one without the "way it's meant to be played" marketing movie at the front of the game. If you don't see what's wrong with that, I guess there's nothing more to say.
Radeon owners weren't being affected adversely in DX10.1. In fact, it enhanced the game for them. The correct way to do this would've been to figure out what's wrong with the Nvidia rendering and fixed that instead of just giving up and downgrading everyone else to match.
As the article points out, Nvidia has issues across the board in DX10.1 with other games. Why should Radeon owners have their experience diminished because Nvidia can't get it working?
I don't see the scandal though. A top-selling card, one that a good percentage of their userbase would be using, has issues with the game. So they fixed it.
Why is that evil?
Well, they could have fixed it by defaluting to DX10 for nVidia, but still allowing Radeon user to use DX10.1. But, they removed the DX 10.1 option altogether, most likely due to the fact there is a loading screen saying "best experienced on nVidia", or some such.
EDIT: What Telefrog said.
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Which is Ironic given the situation that ATI had with its drivers before the 9700 Series.
And it is true. Nvidia's Drivers for Vista are absolute crap. A ton of stuff just doesn't work properly as it should, and then theres the issue with the constant blue screens in Vista due to Nvidias drivers...
The Irony of this entire fiasco is not lost on me.
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sad that vista and dx10 is still such a travesty of epic proportions. I wonder if Microsoft is intentionally trying to fuck up the pc gaming market so more people will switch to consoles
For those interested, here's what HardOCP had to say when testing the DX10.1 version of AC a couple of weeks ago:
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So, regarding DirectX 10.1 in Assassin's Creed two things are clear. It is obvious that DirectX 10.1 brings significant performance enhancement for AMD's ATI Radeon HD 3870 and Radeon HD 3870 X2, and likely for all of the other Radeon HD 3K series of video cards. It is also clear that DirectX 10.1 does not bring with it a visual upgrade worth getting excited about in this game right now. One lousy edge receiving multisampling is not worth writing home about. The ATI Radeon 3870 performance boost gained with DX10.1 certainly is though.
Rather less clear, however, is the fate of DX 10.1 support in Assassin’s Creed and whether ATI Radeon HD 3000 series video cards will maintain the performance results they currently exhibit when AA is enabled. One thing is for sure, DX 10.1 seems to be very positive for AMD. This is the first game to use it, and we saw positive gameplay results. Removing that support would be taking a step backwards instead of pushing the industry forwards. If it truly gets removed in the next patch, that would make absolutely no sense at all from a gamers standpoint.
Kyle’s note: We think we have done our homework here and don’t see any reason for DX10.1 support to be taken away from Radeon 3800 series owners. This is the first time we have seen the ATI Radeon 3870 benefit from the heavily marketed DX10.1 support. To simply take that away is a travesty and we think that Ubisoft should at least leave the choice up to the end user. Obviously you don’t have to patch the game, so Ubisoft can’t really take it away from you, but don’t expect continued support for the DX10.1 version of the game, at least not for the time being. And that time being is very likely till NVIDIA gets its own DX10.1 GPU considering it has a reported US$4,000,000.00 in deals invested with Ubisoft at the moment. Time will tell.
Wait, so the patch hasn't been released yet? Fucking hell! I can't play the game fullscreen in DX10 like quite a few others.
Off-topic: I'm fucking done with Vista. Way too many problems. The only game I'm playing in DX10 is Crysis. And, the next game I'll want to play in DX10 is Clear Sky. What was the last straw? Couldn't install GTA:SA*.
*But, really I'm too cheap to buy a 360 and GTA4.
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