1080p game development makes you a better gamer: Sony

Speaking to GameSpot, Sony president Shuhei Yoshida and PS4 lead architect Mark Cerny discussed why developing games in 1080p is better practice.

Of course, in the wake of the Call of Duty Ghosts resolution scandal, and the imminent launch of PS4 and Xbox One, such discussions should be run through the reader’s PR filter.

Yoshida said “I don’t think any team is just fixated on 1080p, it’s just one of the options…but [1080p] games allow you to be more precise and a better gamer. That’s clearly the benefit. You immediately notice the difference compared to playing most games on PS3, like [the original] Killzone which was rendered at 720p. You can clearly see the enemy in the fog, and with the accuracy of the DualShock 4 dual analog sticks, you can aim and shoot at enemies with pixel-perfect accuracy.”

Cerny said “Resolution does make a difference. If you take a 1080p image and scale it down to 720p, it looks better. That’s called supersampling. It’s a very specific quality graphics technique. In Knack, for example, there is no 720p mode. If you’re playing on a 720p HD TV, we’re just scaling the 1080 down, and it looks better than if we had produced that image at 720p. All of the details of the scene are much more visible as a result.”

“Every developer is doing a trade-off between framerate and resolution, and they do that based on the game experience they are trying to create. Typically the fighting games and the driving games want to be at 60 because of the twitch aspects of the gameplay, so they’re much more sensitive to framerate. The other genres then, tend to have a bit more freeform. Specifically looking at the launch titles for PlayStation 4, most of them are at 1080p. There are a variety of framerates,” said Cerny.

What do you think? Does resolution make or break the gaming experience? Let us know in the comments.