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If you plan on playing Gotham Knights at release, you may want to be aware that the console releases will be limited to just 30 FPS. WB Games Montreal announced this rather unfortunate news this past week in a Discord announcement to fans.
The message, as screenshot by Wario64 on Twitter, says that this 30 FPS limitation is "due to the types of features we have in our game." Some of these framerate limiting features seem to include things like "a fully untethered co-op experience in our highly detailed open-world." WB Games says that due to this, it's not merely as simple as "lowering the resolution and getting higher FPS."
For a majority of releases that have come out on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S, studios have taken to implementing graphical options for players. More often than not, these options are distilled down to two main options: Performance and Quality. Typically, a "Performance" mode in a game means that certain graphical sacrifices are made. These include, but are very much not limited to, things like resolution, the absence of ray tracing features, environmental detail/density, and more. These graphical settings are typically scaled back in an effort to target a 60 FPS (or higher) framerate. Quality modes typically turn on as many graphical bells and whistles as possible, but are usually capped at much lower framerates such as 30 FPS.
It's very interesting that WB Games is placing a strict 30 FPS cap on Gotham Knights here when so many other games have managed to include 60 FPS options on these still very new consoles. While it is true that simply lowering the game's resolution wouldn't alone be enough to hit 60 FPS, one does have to wonder if sacrificing other graphical fidelity options may have gotten them to that goal.
Gotham Knights is a $70 (USD) title on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. It's $60 on PC, where it will presumably be able to run at 60+ FPS if desired. Gotham Knights will be out on October 21, 2022.
