Watch Dogs Graphics and Gameplay: PC Vs. Xbox One, With Surprising Results

MojoKid writes: Normally, the question of whether a game runs better on the PC or a console is a no-brainer, at least for PC users. Watch Dogs, however, with its problematic and taxing PC play, challenges that concept. And since the gap between consoles and PCs is typically smallest at the beginning of the console generation, HotHardware decided to take the Xbox One out for a head-to-head comparison against the PC with this long-awaited title. What was found may surprise you. Depending on just how much horsepower your PC has, the Xbox One (and possibly the PS4 though that wasn't compared) might be the better option. There's no question that the PC can look better, even before you factor in the mods that have been released to date, but unless you've spent $300 or more on a fairly recent GPU, you're not going to be able to run the game at sufficiently high detail to benefit from the enhanced image quality and resolution. If you have a Radeon HD 7950 / R9 280 or an NVIDIA card with greater than 4GB of RAM or a GeForce GTX 780 / 780 Ti, you can happily observe Watch Dogs make hash out of the Xbox One — but statistically, only a minority of gamers have this sort of high-end hardware. This comparison should be viewed in light of the recent allegations that the PC version's graphics were deliberately handicapped.

Comments

Unless you've spent $300 on a GPU...

[Anonymous Coward]

......you won't be able to tolerate incompetent VRAM padding and crippling redundancy of a very 2007-looking game.

Re:Unless you've spent $300 on a GPU...

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget 2007. The game is not even much of a topic. Bland enough to not make as much of an impact as it was advertised to do. Watch_Dogs and Titanfall are both disappointments. Happy I didn't get caught up in the hype for them. Need to be wary of Dragon Age next.

Re:Unless you've spent $300 on a GPU...

[Darinbob]

Unless you've spend $300 on an xbox... (or whatever they cost).

Basically PC games makes sense because most people already have a PC (or Mac). Currently, except for some high end recently released shooters (like watchdogs) in a competitive environment, you don't need a high end GPU and you can get by with a reasonably cheap one less than the cost of a console, or even play on a laptop.

Ten years ago with a mid-range system you would tweak and poke the settings trying to get the best view you could get without causing the game to stutter and lag, but today most games just work great out of the box. Ie, when Oblivion was new people would struggle to get things to look great while still being playable; today though you get Skyrim and accept the defaults.

So buying a console really doesn't save any money, unless you're getting it because you have kids or you want to keep the spouse of your computer. Plus you can even attach a game controller to the PC if you're the sort that prefers that to a mouse and keyboard.

Re:Unless you've spent $300 on a GPU...

[donaldm]

Basically PC games makes sense because most people already have a PC (or Mac).

In what way does PC gaming make more sense? I have a gaming PC that actually runs Linux (ie. Fedora) as my primary and only OS although I do have virtual machines which I hardly every run. Normally a Linux distribution will not run "Games for Windows" without an emulator which in my case I could not be bothered to do, however if the game is web based I normally can run it. I can even run EMU games such as NES, SNES, Megadrive etc. Having said that I actually prefer console games over PC games.

IMHO the gamer has to make the choice of which gaming system they prefer. If you like PC gaming then fine, if you prefer consoles then that is fine also and if you like both then that is fine as well.

Re:Unless you've spent $300 on a GPU...

[L4t3r4lu5]

Really? Games published by Ubi (Watch Dogs) and EA (Titanfall) didn't live up to their hype?

I am Jack's total lack of surprise.

Still stuck with an Athlon XP 6000+

[rsilvergun]

Because it hangs with any rig less than $400. Put a GTX 660 in this year so I could keep gaming in Win 7 after the forced upgrade from XP.

i haven't done any gaming in years...

[Anonymous Coward]

but when i watched the videos it made me feel like i was 23 again! ...but only in the sense that the graphics looked like something 2003. i guess i haven't missed much if this is the most hyped game of this generation...wow.

$300 for a GPU

[Khyber]

Meanhile, the end result doesn't look THAT much better than the PS3, with its measly GeForce 7900 series.

Re:$300 for a GPU

[Charliemopps]

Meanhile, the end result doesn't look THAT much better than the PS3, with its measly GeForce 7900 series.

This is typical. I don't even understand what this story is about. Yes, you need a $300 GPU in your PC to play a brand new AAA title for a brand new console generation. This happens every generation and for about a year the console people will be shouting "Nanner nanner bo bo" at us... But next year we'll only need a $150 card, and the year after that a $75 card. They'll still need their console and its price wont get cut in half every year.

How do PC gamers address this problem? We don't play AAA titles designed for a console the same year that console was released. They suck for PC anyway.

Say what?

[djupedal]

Why does this work so hard to sound organic, when it seems more like a boldfaced ad for xbox?

Re:Say what?

[rwven]

Yeah, pretty much. Watch Dogs doesn't look nearly as good as plenty of PC games out right now, and runs worse than most.

This is nothing more than a deliberately handicapped, badly ported console game. The author is being a shill for the XBone, but the truth of the matter is that he's hiding Ubisoft's dirty downgrade of the game.

PCs were capable of far more than these machines a year before they were released. Now the comparison is just a bad joke.

Bad Ports

[wisnoskij]

This is not new or unique. The PC is full of games that have ridiculously bad console-to-PC ports; With shitty controls, poor graphics, bad performance, and with absolutely no configurability.

Re:Bad Ports

[Tukz]

The correct buzz term is "Early Access" and people pay lots of money for it...

This is all moot.

[dohzer]

The game is rubbish, so who cares which hardware it runs best on?!

Slashdot degrades further and further

[Jahoda]

So this is where we're at now? Not just pay-to-play and inflammatory nonsense, but straight-up government-grade XBOX propaganda where we hear complete garbage like "statistically, only a minority of gamers have this sort of high-end hardware", when your bog-standard $200 R9 270x or Nvidia 760-whatever *smokes* the current console generation in terms of image quality. FPS, and resolution?
Not to mention the hilarity of this all centering around "Watch_Dogs", a game that is a textbook example of publisher bait-and-switch and making promises that are never delivered upon. Ubisoft is the Comcast of gaming.
This isn't even my opinion, this stuff is in wide discussion anywhere on the internet that cares about gaming in-general.

Re:Recent allegations...

[Payden K. Pringle]

I'm just saying. Everything we know points to it being deliberately handicapped. The game actually runs better when you enable the settings that made it look gorgeous at E3. It runs better with better graphical fidelity.

The only excuse for disabling that is intentional malice or extreme incompetence. Ubisoft has a history of either of those in regards to PC gamers. If it were an isolated event, I'd go with incompetence, but this is no longer coincidence. I'm pretty sure it's malice due to it's repetition. l

This ignores the fact...

[Karmashock]

that the game was cripple... would only people with high end hardware notice? Perhaps... but so what? The PC is not the console. Its not a uniform one size fits all platform. You release your game with variable settings that end users can tweak to get the best performance for THEIR machine.

Its how its done. The engine makers build in the hooks to change graphics settings dynamically on the fly with no trouble for a reason.

Just offer it and move on.

A 7950 cost 149$

[Osgeld]

and has been in my box for over a year

obvious troll story

because it fucking is

[gl4ss]

maybe the got some straight up cash for it. it's not like there wasn't a scandal about such bullshittery already.

I mean, fuck, we've ALREADY had articles about shit dogs having a pretty shitty pc port that has features it has disabled on purpose to prevent the pc version from looking better.

why the fuck would they choose watchdogs for doing this comparison? did the at least use the tweaks to bring the pc visual quality BACK to what it was on pre-release demo videos of the game? since you can do that on the PC but you can't do that on the xbox and that makes the PC version look a lot better(to the point of it looking like the pr material distributed pre-release)..

of course the PC to run it like that costs more today than xbox one.

Re:because it fucking is

[rtb61]

Let's check the differences. On a PC I can still watch a DVD on my big screen at the same time. Note the appear equally as large as my PC screen is far closer to me than my big screen TV. On my PC I can play a full range of FTP MMO, free flash games on the internet. I can browse the internet while watching TV. Never to forget I have a fully functional upgradable, dual bootable Computer and not just a games console. I can also buy much cheaper games without having to pay a quite expensive console tax and games discount sooner. With PC at a lan party everyone has their own screen so far better multi-player gaming. I have found every console port to be not that good games pretty much dumbed down PC games with clumsy controls.

When comparing a console to a PC, you are really only comparing the additional cost of turning a PC into a gaming machine versus the console and the loss of use of your TV or a second TV (youch, you have just paid for your PC gaming rig). Gaming consoles of course do suit a particular IQ range of the video gaming market, there is not doubt about that and I'll stop there.

Re:Recent allegations...

[gl4ss]

..but the allegations were true and since it's ubi we're talking about they're probably molesting kids to.

Re:Recent allegations...

[Mashiki]

Going by what modders are pulling out of the game it does appear that it is true.

Re:the mac phenomenon

[Darinbob]

There are more and more games that run on Macs now, at least on Steam (I'm not a Steam lover, but if you've got a mac it's a good way to go).
Although if you've got a macbook pro, do you have money left over to buy a console?

Re:Really bad game to use for this comparison.

[mjwx]

I really hope this isn't the start of a really bad trend of porting over crap, shoving it out the door, and telling the PC community to just throw more hardware at it.

What do you mean by start... This has been happening for years.

Re:Recent allegations...

[pslytely psycho]

http://www.moddb.com/games/watch-dogs/news/mod-enables-e3-graphics

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=390114

I don't own it yet, waiting for it to go on sale, but I read about this from one of IceHancers recent posts.

I can't vouch for them, but perhaps they will be a good place to start.

It looks interesting, but not compelling enough to pay in at full price.

Re:the mac phenomenon

[Nyder]

In the old days, we all had windows desktops which could be modded and used to play games in addition to it's usual uses.

Now all the kids (and myself) only own Mac laptops, and don't want to buy a windows desktop just to game.

So the easy choice is to drop $200 no a game console to augment the Mac.

Let know know when you find a current gen console for $200.

The end-all logic

[slashmydots]

Sorry but the console won't get any better over the years and PC hardware will. So even a year from now, everyone will be playing Watch Dogs at a higher quality.

Re:Multiple PCs and multiple copies

[Khyber]

"There's no practical limit on the number of USB controllers you can attach to one PC"

Yes, there is. 127 per USB controller.

Re:Less hardware, less bloat too

[Khyber]

" a pc couldnt make halo look as delicious"

What? The XBox used a modified GeForce 3.

Just after Halo was released in November 2001, the GeForce 4 came out.

The GeForce 4Ti series ran rings around the Xbox's modified GeForce 3.