Parity: The New Hate In Gaming

In this article I want to talk about how parity has started to affect this new generation of gaming and the ports that have ruined otherwise great games. I’m not an expert, I’m just someone who wants to share their thoughts and opinion.

Parity is something that has become quite infamous recently in the gaming industry. Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Unity on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 is confirmed to be identical; this is parity, which if you didn’t know means equal, or in Ubisoft’s case “equal so you have none of those debates and stuff”. This resulted in many people complaining about the developer being lazy or that they’ve been paid off to make the game equal to their rival. It happens more often than you think, and while you may argue that it is the developer’s fault and in some cases it is, in others it’s not.

Parity has essentially become a dirty word in gaming. You’d think a game being the same across all platforms would be a good thing, but now It’s basically become something that's lacking, not in content but in quality. Since the release of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 it is pretty obvious that most people demand their chosen console version to be better than the other without exception.

If you ignore all the fanboy or fangirl talk and actually look into the technical side of development you’ll find it actually quite interesting. I find myself reading up about the engines used in games and the technical performance behind them and how it runs on either console; I’ve even used and tested development kits to learn more. One of the best sources of information on this is the Digital Foundry from Eurogamer.

They dig deep into the performances of games and face one another off, comparing the versions released on each platform detailing resolution, frame rate and effects used. Of course you could also just google search comparisons but that doesn’t always provide you with a detailed look at the performance.

Of course we had all this last generation with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with the Xbox 360 being usually on top. This generation the tables have turned with Sony’s PlayStation 4 being the most powerful console and many developers feel that Microsoft’s console is holding them back when it comes multiplatform games. I’m not saying this affects each and every multiplatform title released on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 but there are certainly a lot of noticeable titles that have their graphics differences. The power of each console will help detail one reason why this happens and will continue to happen. I tell you now it isn’t about their processors as they are almost identical. It’s actually about each systems memory and graphically capabilities.

The PlayStation 4 features 8GB GDDR system memory while the Xbox One has 8GB as well but running on slower DDR3. GDDR makes a big difference in performance, hence why it’s the type of memory used in high-end PC graphics cards. DDR3 on the other hand, while perfectly acceptable, is slower in comparison and Microsoft have incorporated ESRAM to compensate for the slower speed. It’s the ESRAM that developers have trouble with; similar to the trouble developers had with the PlayStation 3’s Cell Processor, it is difficult to program for.

The graphics are also a different story between the two consoles. The PlayStation 4 has a more powerful graphics card compared to Xbox One’s, roughly 40% and it is primarily this reason for the majority of PlayStation 4 titles handling 1080p compared to Xbox One’s 900p, or more recently the sneaky 1440x1080p, that way they can advertise it as 1080p...hurray for PR.

So with that boring technical stuff out of the way, what does this actually mean?

Well it means that parity doesn’t necessarily work. After the recent release of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Unity it’s pretty clear that if you decide to make the game equal it practically becomes a technical mess. Not only that, it affects all platforms including the PC version (granted Ubisoft hasn’t got the best track record for PC ports). It’s like Ubisoft didn’t care about the opinion of the consumer and just went with “we don’t care that it’s buggy, it looks pretty and look at all those NPC’s on screen! Screw the frame rate”. They know you’ll buy it anyway and not to mention the cheek of putting microtransactions in the game too.

It may sound like I’m hating on Ubisoft but with their recent track record, I am.

Of course it’s not just Ubisoft who use parity on console, others developers in the past have done parity and majority of the time both versions have come out nicely and with excellent performance on both systems. It’s only due to Ubisoft’s arrogance towards their games that has lead to all the hate. But to be fair if you're going to state that you are using parity to stop all the debates and stuff regarding resolution and frame rate; don’t make the game a technical mess.

On the other hand, some developers really are understanding and know that they will do their best to squeeze the juice out from each console, and if it results in one version of the game having a lower resolution than the other or has less effects then so be it. These are best kind of developers; they’re not limiting themselves or forcing themselves to keep the parity between each console because it’s easier. So what if a Xbox One exclusive is only 900p resolution? They could of made it 1080p, but if it’s by design to get the best performance out the system then why argue?

Same goes for the PlayStation 4: it may have more power than the Xbox One but it still won’t mean that the developer will get that 1080p. If you're so worked up about frame rates and resolutions you're better off buying a powerful gaming PC.

At the end of the day, we don’t want to spend our hard earned cash for something that is a technical mess because the developer would rather knock it out in time for the holiday season instead of focusing on making it better. And if that’s the case and it is the same quality as opposing console; go with the version you care about and on your chosen system even if it means having get past of parity nonsense or wait till it is actually fixed after it’s release to truly appreciate.

After all they can patch the game, just not their reputation.