EA is still one of the biggest video game publishers in the world, no matter how much hate they garner sometimes. Since the monstrous Battlefront II scandal, EA has been good at keeping the peace by releasing their games in respectable conditions. Recent entries like Wild Hearts, Dead Space, or Need for Speed Unbound weren't the epitome of technical perfection, but they launched with little to no headaches, depending on the case. Now, it looks like EA's clean streak is over, with technical disasters like Jedi Survivor and with the two-day trailer delay of the highly-anticipated F1 23.
Not even four days ago, EA launched a video about their collaboration with the Konnersport Racing Team. The most important thing from that clip wasn't what they actually talked about, but what lies in the Description box. If you look closely, you'll see that it says: "Tune in for the full reveal of #F123, starting May 1, 2023."
F1 fans have been waiting for the 2023 iteration for quite a while now, and you can imagine that after seeing the date was pushed back to May 3 (8 AM PDT, 11 AM EDT, 4 PM BST, 5 PM CEST), people started to get disappointed.
Some hardcore fans stayed up past 1 AM, especially to see the reveal trailer, only to get "tricked" and leave their dissatisfaction in the comment section. Not to mention the high levels of irony you'll also find there from everyone else who left a comment.
While there's no evidence that F1 23 will release in a poor shape like Star Wars Jedi Survivor, when you put these "scandals" so close to each other, it's only normal for the more enthusiastic people to start with the old "EA disappoints" banter all over again.
If you're unfamiliar with what happened to Jedi Survivor, released just this week, then sit down, "Stay a while, and listen," as Diablo's Deckard Cain would say. It doesn't matter if you only play racing games because this could also impact your side of the gaming spectrum.
To make a long story short, Respawn Entertainment, the developers, launched the game "undercooked," so to speak. Technically, it's almost a complete disaster on consoles and PC.
The tech geniuses at Digital Foundry have analyzed every frame and discovered that on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, Jedi Survivor couldn't maintain a steady framerate even if you play in Quality or Performance mode.
Quality mode is capped at 30 fps (frames per second), but in some scenes, it drops to 17, which translates to a horrible gameplay experience. While the Performance mode should hover around 60 constantly, it can drop as low as 40 fps.
I'm playing it on a PC with an Nvidia RTX 4080 GPU and i9-13900k CPU, and I can only get it to stay at 60 in 4K if I turn AMD FSR on and fiddle with the graphical settings.
EA has issued an apology and a patch, but the game is far from fixed. Let's hope F1 23 has a smoother launch than Jedi Survivor.
As you know, AAA games these days cost $70, but if you subscribe to the EA Play Pro service (PC only) for $15 a month, you'll get access to their entire roster, including F1 23. If it's in bad condition, you will have saved 55 bucks.
Codrin just loves American classics, from the 1940s and ‘50s, all the way to the muscle cars of the '60s and '70s. In his perfect world, we'll still see Hudsons and Road Runners roaming the streets for years to come (even in EV form, if that's what it takes to keep the aesthetic alive). Full profile
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