Why do so many japanese anime games have a 30 fps lock

[Griffin]

I mean alot of people tell me its because of animations but i dont even understand also i play alot of naruto ultimate ninja storm 3 on pc its locked at 60 fps but the new games naruto ultimate ninja storm 4 is gonna be 60 fps

[Puzzlemint]

It's because the PC gaming market is practically nonexistent in Japan.

No market = no demand for standards = no standards.

[Dude on Fire]

Because Japan doesn't care about PC, and the console standard is 30.

Regarding the whole animation-thing, it's pretty simple; if you animate something in 30 fps, it's going to look weird if you let the rest of the game flow at a higher framerate (like the animations are lagging... because they would literally be lagging). Unlocking the game itself doesn't mean the handcrafted animations get any more frames injected into them.

Make sense?

[Wind]

Originally posted by AxelssonOnFire:

Because Japan doesn't care about PC, and the console standard is 30.

Regarding the whole animation-thing, it's pretty simple; if you animate something in 30 fps, it's going to look weird if you let the rest of the game flow at a higher framerate (like the animations are lagging... because they would literally be lagging). Unlocking the game itself doesn't mean the handcrafted animations get any more frames injected into them.

Make sense?

That's true but also, handcrafted animations, like movies, looks more fluid than in-engine footage at a lower framerate because of the presence of transition frames that give the illusion of movement.

[Dude on Fire]

Originally posted by Whirlwind86:

Originally posted by AxelssonOnFire:

Because Japan doesn't care about PC, and the console standard is 30.

Regarding the whole animation-thing, it's pretty simple; if you animate something in 30 fps, it's going to look weird if you let the rest of the game flow at a higher framerate (like the animations are lagging... because they would literally be lagging). Unlocking the game itself doesn't mean the handcrafted animations get any more frames injected into them.

Make sense?

That's true but also, handcrafted animations, like movies, looks more fluid than in-engine footage at a lower framerate because of the presence of transition frames that give the illusion of movement.

Are transition frames really a thing in game engines, though? Wouldn't it, by definition, only happen in cases of pre-rendered stuff?

[Deathpinca]

Actually, I'd imagine the real reason Japanese games are locked at 30 fps is because a lot of Japanese games come out on vita, which can really only handle 30 fps, and these developers or publishers don't really care about making working on making them 60. There are some companies that do put the effort in though, like Compile Heart, but for the most part gaming at home isn't something that is feasable for the average Japanese person who spends most of their time awake either commuting to work or working. This causes standards to be lower than the standards of a group of people that spend more time with video games.

[Wind]

Originally posted by AxelssonOnFire:

Originally posted by Whirlwind86:

That's true but also, handcrafted animations, like movies, looks more fluid than in-engine footage at a lower framerate because of the presence of transition frames that give the illusion of movement.

Are transition frames really a thing in game engines, though? Wouldn't it, by definition, only happen in cases of pre-rendered stuff?

Exactly.
That's the reason i prefaced it with "handcrafted animations and movies"
If we talk about difference between animating in-engine cutscenes at 30 and gameplay at 60, then you are right, that's really noticeable (like in Dragon Age: Inquisition for example)

[RafePheonix]

Originally posted by Splatoon Girl's Teeth:

Actually, I'd imagine the real reason Japanese games are locked at 30 fps is because a lot of Japanese games come out on vita, which can really only handle 30 fps, and these developers or publishers don't really care about making working on making them 60. There are some companies that do put the effort in though, like Compile Heart, but for the most part gaming at home isn't something that is feasable for the average Japanese person who spends most of their time awake either commuting to work or working. This causes standards to be lower than the standards of a group of people that spend more time with video games.

This is on track with my thinking. It's easier to just keep the graphics tied to the physics so lock it at the lowest FPS you're shooting for and forget the rest.

[Senpai Potato]

I presume it's laziness and no 60fps (PC standart) market existence.

[FluffyPuppyKasey]

It's hand drawn, try drawing 2x more frames than 30fps.

It would take a while to draw 60fps

[MC War Crimez]

You can draw any amount of aniamtion frames at any framerate, and it's always been that way. Mario Bros. ran at 60 fps and Mario had less than 10 frames for running. Nobody complains about how it looks. Anyway, most 3D games these days run their animations independent of framerate, especially multiplatform ones.

It's less technical hurdles and more just an adherence to the Japanese market's console dominance. Most Japanese games are 30 fps. Japanese games that run at 60 fps can have excellent animations, just look at beautifully animated fighting games or other genres.

[Rando]

Fritz gets it. There's another small side to this story though - Japanese arcade boards. Most games on these run at 60FPS, but a lot aren't released outside Japan. Typically they are fighting and other competitive games (because of input latency) running on a Taito X or Sega Ringedge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taito_Type_X
http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=982

Combined with the NESiCAxLive and all.net services in particular it has paved the way for a fair number of Steam "ports" that aren't locked to 30 FPS (in quotes because the modern arcade boards use stock PC hardware and Microsoft Windows (and in rare cases Linux)). Some examples include Dead or Alive and Arc Systemworks ports.

All in all it's just the ecosystem there, unfortunately.

[FFG-201]

Basically most Japanese title we seen today releases outside from japan are collaboration with outside company. Japan don't intend to expand the market of gaming globally. They prefer they own community as their customer. If you dig more most popular Japanese game are like VN, Browser type, 2D animation, and pixel animation. These game does generate more popularity and profitabble compare their AAA games. I can say they don't intend to go full blown 60 fps like most US/EU game due to higher budget and longer time to develop. The releasing of some game in pc just to please their fans only.

[Griffin]

ok i understand

[Chrisliebär]

I've played around with the internals of a few games from the asian market. Most of them beeing from the early 2000 and it seems to me that many games are just coded very poorly.

You encounter some developer that only owned a 4:3 monitor and thus only created resolutions for it while placing the UI elements in absolute pixels. Forcefully changing the resulution fucks things up or mismatches the assumed viewport with the drawn viewport, resulting in cut out geometry, etc.

So from that I conclude that this is more of an issue because these companies are not sharing the same level of quality assurance that we are used in the European and US market.

Asian games share some common "thing" that makes me as a software developer go "ewww". I can't pinpoint it.

[Marusame]

Yeah the animation thing is bunk because ALL japanese 2D fighters run at 60fps because fps doesnt JUST mean how many frames are being refreshed, its also INPUT and 60fps means half the input lag/delay of a button press.

Hence why even Smash Bros. on N64 was in 60fps and one of only 2 games i think that ever was 60fps native on n64 because of that.

But overall, yeah its just they generally dont have the hardware many are probably still running windows XP, older hardware they havnt seen the glory of 60fps and when looking at anime games and what not the movement is often janky anyways for open world games so everything together just means its a perfect storm of just not seeing the golden glory of pc master race for what it is.