The Division’s Developer Speaks Out About Not Pushing PC Graphics Further

Tom Clancy’s The Division, created by Ubisoft Massive is a third-person cover shooter set in a chaotic New York City. During its initial E3 unveil, the game received a great deal of praise due to the absolutely stunning visual fidelity. However, it’s quite common for the graphical quality to be reduced by a significant margin due to the limitations of the current console generation. Furthermore, industry demos are usually run on very high-end PC hardware. This doesn’t mean that those with premium hardware shouldn’t be able to access the game’s maximum potential though and that’s the reason why the PC incorporates various presets. Ubisoft Massive is primarily a PC focussed developer and The Division is still a gorgeous title. Although, according to the recent beta, it does require some pretty hefty hardware to run at higher resolutions.

In an interview with YouTube channel, Team Epiphany, Ubisoft Massive explained the considerations when making the console and PC versions:

“One good thing about The Division is we’ve always considered the PC as a separate platform. We do have to keep it in check with the consoles; it would be kind of unfair to push it so far away from them. But it’s been good having a dedicated PC build for this game.”

As you can see, the developer is stating that the PC version cannot be overly superior otherwise it would impact on the console. Honestly, this is a baffling notion and downgrading the graphics to ensure fairness seems completely unfair! Console players are still going to experience similar gameplay, and those without a gaming PC, are fully content with the version they receive. This means, it makes no sense to negatively downscale the PC edition just to appease disgruntled console players. The only positive I suppose to come from this is at least The Division doesn’t implement parity between various platforms and features a host of PC exclusive features.