No One Really Cares About 1080p, Says Far Cry 4 Dev

Far Cry 4 creative director Alex Hutchinson thinks its weird that people can enjoy a retro pixel game, yet complain about resolution in AAA titles.

All of those 1080p vs 720p debates we keep seeing this generation are just people screaming into an echo chamber, claims Far Cry 4 creative director Alex Hutchinson. Hutchinson completely dismissed the entire resolution debate in an interview with Official Xbox Magazine, claiming that the reality is that people just don’t really care if a game is 1080p or not.

“Five per cent of the audience is online commenting [about resolution], and 95 per cent are just buying them or not buying them,” he said. “We create these weird echo chambers for those issues, and sometimes I wonder, I don’t think this is real.” When asked when he thought players would stop obsessing over graphical fidelity, Hutchinson added “I think they already have secretly.”

He went on to say that “It feels weird to me that people are cool about playing a sort of retro pixel game, and yet the resolution [in AAA titles] somehow matters. It’s like: is it fun, is it interesting, is it new, is it fresh, are there interesting questions?”

“With the 4K TVs and things – somebody was telling me that with a 4K TV, to even see it, your living room has to be big enough to sit like 12 feet from the screen. I don’t know the exact numbers, but it starts to get a little crazy. I’m just in it for the experience, I’ll play a SNES game if it’s cool.”

Hutchinson might have a valid point that the people complaining about resolution make up a minority of the gaming population, but he doesn’t seem to quite understand how resolution works. For example, those retro indie games that he’s talking about, while having quite low quality graphics, still indeed run at 1080p on most systems. Similarly, I’m no scientist, but I don’t think that’s how 4K TVs work…

Do you agree with Hutchinson? Are 1080p complainers just yelling into an echo chamber? Or is it a legitimate complaint they can have?

Source: Official Xbox Magazine