Developer blames “potato” Xbox Series S for locking Gotham Knights at 30fps on consoles

A hot potato: We’re used to seeing games on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X offer performance modes that up the framerates, but not Gotham Knights. The hotly anticipated Rocksteady title will have one of the restrictions we often saw on the previous-generation consoles: a 30 frames-per-second limit. According to a dev, the fault lies with the “potato” Xbox Series S.

Gotham Knights executive producer Fleur Marty recently confirmed via Discord that the game would be locked at 30fps@4K on the Xbox Series X/S and PS5. The title lacks the familiar performance mode that sacrifices some graphical fidelity/resolution for a higher framerate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbyT8nvn5Mc?

The company says the reason for this decision is the “type of features” found in Gotham Knights, such as the fully untethered co-op option in the highly detailed world, which means it’s not as straightforward as lowering the resolution to increase the fps, apparently.

This came as something of a surprise given that Warner Bros. previously canceled plans for PS4/Xbox One versions of Gotham Knights to provide players with “the best possible gameplay experience.”

Lee Devonald, a Senior Character Technical Artist from Rocksteady, tweeted that the real culprit isn’t the game features; it’s the Xbox Series S. He says the cheaper Xbox Series isn’t much better than its last-gen predecessor. And as multi-platform games have to be optimized for the lowest performer, the XBS, which Devonald calls a “potato,” is hamstringing “an entire generation of games.”

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Senior dev says Xbox Series S is holding back this generation of games and says it’s not much better than a last gen console. pic.twitter.com/evrnGqt9Zc

— THE RED DRAGON ” (@TWTHEREDDRAGON) October 15, 2022

Unsurprisingly, Devonald’s tweets generated a strong response. He eventually deleted them and has now removed his entire Twitter account—even though he isn’t the first dev to complain about making compromises for the console.

It might be lacking in power, but the Xbox Series S was Microsoft’s best-selling console in some key markets last November. The company has pushed out updates recently to improve boot times and give developers access to additional memory, which can improve graphic performance in memory-constrained conditions. But it doesn’t seem to have been enough to run Gotham Knights at 60fps.

PC owners, of course, won’t be locked to 30fps. Gotham Knights’ Steam page notes that it can hit 60fps at low settings in 1080p using a GTX 1660 Ti/Radeon RX 590 and a Core i5-9600K/Ryzen 5 3600.