Need for Speed Rivals runs at 30 FPS on consoles

Need for Speed Rivals will run at 30 frames per second (FPS) on all console platforms.

Speaking to Eurogamer at Gamescom 2013, Ghost Games’ founder Marcus Nilsson says that the choice between running the game at 60fps or 30fps was difficult, but worth it in order to bring their vision to both platforms with AllDrive. AllDrive is the system used to seamlessly matchmake players within the same open world city. In the game, players can bump into each other whether they’re completing Assignments as a cop, Speed Lists as a Racer, or just exploring.

Need for Speed Rivals will be a platform launch title for both the Xbox One and Playstation 4, and promises open-world racing with instant, spontaneous co-op where friends can join their racing worlds together to create chaos on a large scale.

Ghost Games said that in order to preserve the mechanism that drives the insanity, which they call AllDrive, they had to make concessions on frame rates in order to keep the experience consistent between platforms and when the proverbial rubber hits the tarmac.

“It is a choice we made to be able to push what we believe is really important for our typical gamer: get a lot of things happening on the screen at the same time,” Nilsson told Eurogamer.

“Anything can happen in AllDrive. That’s the key innovation with this game. You don’t have single-player, co-op or multiplayer. It just happens seamlessly. I could be playing the game, setting a time, and all of a sudden you could come into that world, and you could be carrying AI, I could be carrying AI, and all of a sudden, on that screen, there are a lot of cars. We always have to budget for the worst case scenario.”

There is also currently a cap of six players that can be playing together in the city at any given time. Nilsson told Eurogamer that they were looking into increasing the count and noted that on next-gen platforms and the PC, there’ll be scope for adding even more players at the same time.

AllDrive cannot be turned off and will remain enabled if you are playing the game while connected to the internet. The game can be played and completed offline, for those without a stable or speedy internet connection.