A string of PC releases has suggested that native resolution gaming is dead, but there’s a little more to the conversation.
Native resolution is dead, or so the story goes. A string of PC games released this year, with the most recent being Alan Wake 2, have come under fire for basically requiring some form of upscaling to achieve decent performance. Understandably, there’s been some backlash from PC gamers, who feel as if the idea of running a game at native resolution is quickly becoming a bygone era.
There’s some truth to that, but the idea that games will rely on half-baked upscalers to achieve reasonable performance instead of “optimization” is misguided at best — and downright inaccurate at worst. Tools like Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) will continue to be a cornerstone of PC gaming, but here’s why they can’t replace native resolution entirely.The outcry
Let’s start with why PC gamers have the impression that native resolution is dead. The most recent outcry came over Alan Wake 2 when the system requirements revealed that the game was built around having either DLSS or FSR turned on. That’s not a new scenario, either. The developers of Remnant 2 confirmed the game was designed around upscaling, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a AAA release in the last few years that didn’t pack in upscaling tech.
You can see an example of the reaction to Remnant 2 below that focuses on the “consequences” of tools like DLSS on the gaming industry. Another example, which I won’t post, is when a commenter on Reddit jokingly recommended forming a self-harm cult so “they will see the error of their ways and repent,” referring to developers requiring upscaling. Obviously a joke, but it’s a good illustration of the general reaction from the PC gaming community to games increasingly relying on upscaling to improve performance.
It’s not the upscaling alone that is the problem here. For as many great games have been released this year, there have been a string of disastrous PC ports. It’s understandable why PC gamers would look at that, factor in upscaling requirements, and come to the conclusion that features like DLSS and FSR are a crutch for poor optimization. It’s understandable, but that doesn’t make it true.
On top of that, the larger PC community has doubled down on this conversation, further reinforcing the idea that upscaling has been a crutch for poor optimization. A clip from The WAN Show podcast, for example, is titled “Native Res Gaming is Dead” and talks about Nvidia’s new DLSS 3.5 feature. And in Tom’s Hardware’s coverage of an interview Digital Foundry conducted with Nvidia, the headline reads: “Nvidia says native resolution gaming is out, DLSS is here to stay.” You can see a reaction to that article from a reader below.
As is usually the case, these conversations carry nuance to them, but for PC gamers casually browsing headlines with preformed ideas about game optimization, it’s easy to see why the backlash against tools like DLSS and FSR have become an easy, default position. And now that we’re seeing games that basically require upscaling to run, there’s a slippery slope sentiment looming over the PC gaming community.
