Are Console Developers Neglecting Their Standard-Def Players?

[wraggster]

The Digital Foundry blog takes a look at how the focus on high-quality graphics in console game development may be lost on more gamers than people realize. According to Mark Rein of Epic Games, more than half of Gears of War 2 users played the game on a standard-definition television. While you might expect that dropping the graphics quality would correspond to a boost in frame rates, that turns out not to be the case, and running at standard definition can actually be a detriment in some cases. Quoting:
"PAL50 is mandatory for SD gameplay on all games on all European PS3s. You can't avoid running at a sub-optimal 50Hz unless you splash out on a high-def screen. The Euro release of Killzone 2 works at SD resolution on any PS3, even if it can only run at PAL50 on a Euro machine. In short, if you're a Euro PS3 owner playing Killzone 2 on a standard-definition display, you're losing around 17 per cent of the frame-rate owing to the lack of PAL60 support in the PS3 hardware. The game itself isn't slower as such (as was often the case in the Mega Drive/SNES era), and you'll note that it's effectively a sustained 25FPS while the 60Hz versions can be somewhat more variable. But Killzone 2 is already somewhat laggy in its control system and this impacts the feel of the game still further. While there is a 17 per cent increase in resolution, this is far less noticeable than the additional numbness in the controls."

http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/0...rd-Def-Players

[Auriman1]

I got Worms off the XBLA network, and wouldn't you know it, it's designed specifically for high-def TV's (which I don't have). They just cram the wide screen picture onto a standard def TV, leaving huge black bars on the top and bottom, making it very difficult to make anything out due to how small everything is. Whenever I play that game, I need to tell my 360 I'm using a wide screen just so it'll use the entire screen (causing a slight "squishing" effect, but compared to the alternative, it's worth it).

[ICE]

Ive noticed that some of the text in PS3 games is completely unreadable on my SD tv. Its sort of disappointing and annoying..

[Stone Temple Pilots]

The black bars appear for almost every single PS3 game played on an SD-TV, don't they? I know they do for MGS4 and possibly RE5?

[lengthug]

yep I noticed that black bar thingy too