‘Destiny 2’ Non-Dedicated Servers May Be The Reason For No 60 FPS On PS4 Pro

Destiny 2 won’t support 60 frame-per-second gameplay on consoles, and experts at Digital Foundry suggest the game’s non-dedicated servers may be a limiting factor with regard to PS4 Pro. The statement was made in an analysis video posted Tuesday.

Hardware expert Richard Leadbetter expresses slight dismay at the PS4 Pro version’s 30 fps cap around the video’s six-minute mark. However, it’s what he says afterward that’s pretty interesting. In conversation with triple-A network programmer Glenn Fiedler, Leadbetter suggests the following thoughts were discussed.

Read: 7 Big Reveals You Missed After May’s Destiny 2 Gameplay Stream

“The physics, the AI, all of that stuff could be offloaded to the cloud to dedicated servers and this would free up a lot of computational resources on the clients.” With that thought in mind, Leadbetter muses that “maybe [Destiny 2] could have been a 60 frame-per-second game if they were shifting to a dedicated server model."

While the information obviously arrives secondhand, it comes from a very qualified source. Fiedler has not only worked on networking projects with Sony, but he’s also been involved with shipping major multiplayer titles like Titanfall on Xbox One and PC. This history may or may not limit Fiedler’s knowledge of the PS4 Pro specifically, but he certainly knows a lot about gaming networks regardless.

In few words, his statement partially refutes claims made by Destiny 2 producer Mark Noseworthy during the Destiny 2 reveal event last week. When asked why 60 fps support wasn’t coming to consoles, Noseworthy spoke to IGN about a CPU bottleneck. “We have more monsters to shoot with physically simulated vehicles and characters and projectiles...and then you add five to seven players in a public event. That is incredibly intensive for hardware," he argued. When probed about dedicated server support, director Luke Smith also said “it’s not really something we need.”

Read: Destiny 2 Seems Like It Will Run 4K 30FPS On Project Scorpio

From our perspective, these contradicting accounts give credence to the fact that maybe Bungie doesn’t want Destiny 2 to run at 60 fps on high-spec consoles even though it feasibly could. After all, supporting 30 fps on a standard PS4 and 60 fps on PS4 Pro would potentially offer an unfair multiplayer advantage for folks on Pro. In order to keep online competition balanced, a 30 fps network environment may have been deemed the most reasonable and cost effective option.

This potential multiplayer gap leads us to assume the 30 fps lock will likely be in place between Xbox One and Xbox Scorpio as well. While Microsoft just recently clarified that developers are free to run Scorpio games at any framerate they desire, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll always push for maximum output.

Destiny 2 comes to PS4 and Xbox One Sept. 8. A PC release date has not been announced.

Do you think Destiny 2 should support 60 fps on PS4 Pro if it can? Are you OK with keeping multiplayer balanced? Tell us in the comments section!