The first version of Final Fantasy XV: Episode Duscae has a slightly shaky frame rate, but the situation was improved for version 2.0. At Gamescom, I had a change to ask Director Hajime Tabata how his "quest" for 1080p and 30 stable frames per second is proceeding.

Tabata-san's answer was quite interesting:

The honest answer to that is that there's obviously a dfference in specifications between the two consoles. Maybe we haven't fully grasped how to get the full potential of each of the consoles yet. We're still working on that.

If we were gonna make it just for a single platform, and really optimize the game structure and the technology for the platform, it would be very possible to do that.

But because we have to work on that as a multiplatform game, I still can't quite guarantee that we'll definitely be able to make that on all platforms.

But certainly, from a technical perspective,

• we are already at a point where we can very much guarantee a thirty frames per second frame rate with constant and stable rate in the same way as in Duscae 2.0.

 

Tabata-san also added that getting to sixty frames per second would be impossible on consoles. With a full open world game, with action-based combat, so many special effects and moving objects and characters, running at 1080p and 60 FPS would require a top PC.

Speaking of PC, Tabata-san mentioned that there's no current solid plan for a PC version, and that's because the tuning for a PC game is different from a console game.

At the moment the team is focusing on getting the final game out and tuning it for a TV screen in the living room. The team feels that people have been waiting for the game for a long time, so it's important to release it as soon as possible.

That said, once the console version will be out, they will want to think about the next step, and they'll consider a PC version too.

Tabata-san is also very interested in Steam, because it allows to reach a very different demographic from the one offered by consoles, so he'll be looking at creating opportunities to use the platform in the future.