Ubisoft hasn’t exactly had the best track record when it comes to PC games. Blame the Uplay system or some of that terrible DRM which they mercifully scrapped this year, but console has generally had a better audience response for their games. And that’s something that Ubisoft wants to change, staring with Assassin’s Creed 4.
Speaking on the Ubisoft Blog, Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag associate producer Sylvain Trottier said that the team wanted to make all its games equally great across consoles and PC platforms.
“That’s why Ubisoft had a team dedicated solely to building the PC version of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, working on everything from the UI to the controls to wide range of settings encountered in PC gaming. It’s absolutely not true that we don’t care about PC optimization,” Trottier said.
If we didn’t care about PC optimization, then we would not have such a big team dedicated just to the PC version in Kiev.
We are very proud of the PC version of Black Flag: the game runs well on low-end PCs, and lots of additional features were added for higher-end machines, allowing each and every customer to fully enjoy the experience on their PCs.
Our partnership with Nvidia that saw our respective engineering teams work together to develop a highly optimized PC version also demonstrates our commitment to the platform.
If you can see our game run at 4k resolution on PC, it’s magical. It’s beautiful.
Trottier explained that optimisation for Assassin’s Creed 4 started on PC first, as that was the platform where the developers were not only more familiar with, but comfortable as well. With the Xbox One and Playstation 4 having similair architecture though, these familiarities could be extended to those consoles as well.
“If, say, the team finds a way to shave 50% off the GPU burden for a particular effect, they can then expect a roughly equivalent savings on both next-gen consoles, and they can be confident in their ability to apply those savings,” Trottier said. “It’s not 100% linear, but at least it gives you an order of magnitude.”
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag has finally released on PC, as well as next-gen consoles. And honestly, it might just be the game that pops my this-gen cherry when I Playstation 4 next month.
Last Updated: November 25, 2013
Willem Swanepoel
November 25, 2013 at 12:11
Going to pick up my PC copy today 😉 whoop whoop
Hammersteyn
November 25, 2013 at 12:16
I might actually get myself a copy. Sounds a lot better than the third one.
Willem Swanepoel
November 26, 2013 at 10:21
I played about 1-2 hours. Really fun so far, I actually enjoyed AC3 and this one is better 😉
Hammersteyn
November 25, 2013 at 12:15
Yeah, yet another thing consoles needs to catch up on with PC’s. DRM
TiMsTeR1033
November 25, 2013 at 12:16
The times we live in…
Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)
November 25, 2013 at 12:25
Agreed…
TiMsTeR1033
November 25, 2013 at 12:26
EPIC FAIL!
Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)
November 25, 2013 at 12:29
Hehe… It’s a slow day 😛
Admiral Chief Duke
November 25, 2013 at 12:36
I really hope that wasn’t your weekend…
Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)
November 25, 2013 at 12:37
Nah… Couldn’t find anyone that was willing to swap partners
Admiral Chief Duke
November 25, 2013 at 12:37
But the fact THAT YOU WANTED TO SWAP remains!!!
Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)
November 25, 2013 at 12:40
Have you never though about it?
Admiral Chief Duke
November 25, 2013 at 12:44
I can honestly say, that I have not even once considered it
Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)
November 25, 2013 at 12:47
But it’s kinda like a 3 way… Except you are 4 people and you swap 😀
Alien Emperor Trevor
November 25, 2013 at 12:55
Swapping remains? With who? NecroRince?
John's (JJ's) finest excuse
November 25, 2013 at 12:57
No thanks. That liver might be dead, but I’m sure it can still feel pain.
Alien Emperor Trevor
November 25, 2013 at 13:00
I think at this point it perceives pain as pleasure.
John's (JJ's) finest excuse
November 25, 2013 at 13:05
That would make sense, him being a ginger and all.
John's (JJ's) finest excuse
November 25, 2013 at 12:49
You have a partner?
Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)
November 25, 2013 at 12:53
Yes :D… But she was just as freaked out, she even threatened to ban me from the internet :O
John's (JJ's) finest excuse
November 25, 2013 at 12:56
That’s a serious threat
Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)
November 25, 2013 at 12:59
Jip, I don’t even want to repeat the things she said after I showed her the Little baby ice cream ad :O
John's (JJ's) finest excuse
November 25, 2013 at 13:05
Yes, well, when I showed the Baby’s Ice Cream to my girlfriend she said she might never sleep again, followed by there are some f&*$^ up people out there.
ToshZA
November 25, 2013 at 12:32
http://www.lolbrary.com/content/311/nough-said-59311.jpg
John's (JJ's) finest excuse
November 25, 2013 at 12:49
That’s not a gun in his pocket. But it should be.
Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)
November 25, 2013 at 12:28
I am curious though, how does one exactly Playstation 4? Is this the same as accidentally the whole fleshlight?…
ToshZA
November 25, 2013 at 12:31
So, will next gen graphics look something like this?
http://www.lolbrary.com/content/848/just-no-58848.jpg
Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)
November 25, 2013 at 12:36
That kinda looks like a Groboid :O
John's (JJ's) finest excuse
November 25, 2013 at 12:47
Cool.
Kensei Seraph
November 25, 2013 at 13:34
Now that would be an awesome boss fight.
Chris
November 25, 2013 at 12:33
Well this is a joke! I bought AC4 Black Flag on PC on Friday. Install took a good 30minutes and I needed to download 200mb+ patch which rendered the game useless. Just received the “game has been inspired by various religions” BS and then a black screen. My PC is relatively high end ( GTX680, 12 GB RAM, etc ) and I have the latest Drivers. I read some forums and I needed to uninstall, reinstall and NOT download the patch and then the game worked. So, yes more than an hour wasted on this crap. I am sick of uncompleted games being released. So much for the game being optimised!
Willem Swanepoel
November 26, 2013 at 10:20
it is working fine now 😉 you should have played something else to kill time hehehhe
It runs really good on medium with my 5750 ^_^
Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew
November 25, 2013 at 12:35
I still don’t like ubisoft
Kromas
November 25, 2013 at 13:02
They lost my love for them after my brand new 4XDVD-WRITER died from star force.
Hillbilly Gamer
November 25, 2013 at 12:55
Interesting that view that AAA PC gaming is dying has changed so suddenly after MS announcement that they developing code for PC gaming again.
Wyzak
November 25, 2013 at 13:05
Bring on ze watch dogs!
FoxOneZA
November 25, 2013 at 13:25
The game runs at 30fps on on PC. That’s poor optimisation 😉
UltimateNinjaPandaDudeGuy
November 25, 2013 at 15:55
Has anyone played the PC version? How does it handle and does it just feel like a port?
Johan du Preez
November 25, 2013 at 19:01
Really then why is AC Black Flag so badly optimized ?
Bob Miles
December 10, 2013 at 09:28
“We are very proud of the PC version of Black Flag: the game runs well on low-end PCs”
Blatant lie…