3DClouds Responds To Criticism Of The Switch Version Of Xenon Racer

It's good to see a publisher and developer try to fix problems instead of ignoring them. A+ for honesty!

Nice that they are addressing it but honestly I think it's a little too late.

If some of these issues were only going to take 2-3 weeks to iron out, they probably should’ve delayed the game..

It's absolutely pitiful, these guys do not know how to use the hardware, compare to games like fast racing Neo RMX.

We could give them props for being "honest", or...
we could just laugh at them and call their BS, and while doing that, refer them to Shin'en, who might be able to help them by showing how it's actually done, roadside assets and all included, some even randomly animated as well.

These are just marginally average developers, with no idea of how to get the most out of the hardware, and not even on the Switch specifically. There's also quite a lot wrong with the versions on the other consoles, which is only more proof towards their BS reasons.

Holding these developers accountable after they so willingling take our cash is exactly what we need to do folks. Show them we won’t play second fiddle, show them that they need to put in the effort, at the end of the day it will only make them a better developer overall and it will generate more support for their games.

It's too late for me as well. I'm returning my unopened copy back to Amazon. Based off their comments....they still won't hit 30 fps unless it looks like an atari jag game.

They should have waited to release it. What did they think would happen releasing it like this?

I hope this will be a but of a lesson for all dev teams porting to the switch.

Personally, I'd prefer a racing game that skimped on the flashy details and focused on the framerate and general performance...framerate and smooth gameplay is too important for a racer.

Xenon reeks of a game that was made for more powerful platforms and clumsily ported rather than built with the Switch in mind...it's the only reason I can think that it can look so much worse than Fast RMX (or even GameCube F-Zero!) and yet still run this poorly.

I'd really like to see some racers developed from the ground up just for the Switch.

Its a no go for me,was looking forward to this as there is a shortage of good racers on switch but Im tired of developers releasing unfinished games ,this should not have passed qc,do they play them before release?

Most people are honest once they get caught.

Well at least they're trying.

They're being honest now but that's just in response to the well deserved criticism they've received online. If they'd been honest from the start and said they were delaying the Switch port so they can get it up to the standard Switch gamers expect, they would have received a lot of credit for that. Instead they've deliberately mislead buyers, put out a £40 game in a completely unacceptable state and likely damaged their reputation with Nintendo gamers permanently. Just like that Big Ben Interactive have done more than once, they're basically trying to scam you.

Another game for the garbage bin

Performance mode = 30fps

@mist Yeah, exactly! Maybe we can get a super ultra performance mode, one that actually runs smoothly???

"Xenon Racer being set mostly within cities has a huge amount of graphical assets and with the speed of the game it simply means the console processor is constantly at its limit to pull all of these assets into the game in time. Had we gone for wide open landscapes or standard racing tracks with our design it would have helped."

So that is why a game like Need for Speed Most Wanted on the PS Vita, a open-world game runs and looks better (heck it even uses 4x AA on the Vita) than this in handheld mode on the Switch (and on par in dock)

Plus that NFS game has barely to none pop in.

(and Vita has same issue as the Switch, a low clocked CPU)

Sure the resolution of that Vita game is lower, but if Xenon Racer runs at 25fps 720p in dock I doubt it's that high resolution in portable mode.

"A performance / quality mode is also being added so the game will play at a minimum of 30fps unless quality mode is chosen." yeah imagine how "good' the game will look in such mode compared to now.

If they just said "we are a small team and optimising such game costs too much time and money, and our engine isn't well optimised for the Switch" then, just maybe I would believe them because even the PS4 version looks worse than it should be, well at least the PC version looks and runs nice.

I won't start about Wipeout 2048 on the Vita, that game was tailor made for that system, NFS was a port that nobody expected would be possible

@BalrogtheMaster in hindsight your probably right but the leadtimes for the Switch cartridge are 12 weeks compared to 3 days for a disc. We thought we had enought time to get the patches sorted but we ran into an external roadblock only 2 weeks that pushed things past the day 1 at that point it was too late.

...Maybe they should just let Panic Button fix the game up...

@Joeynator3000 I can live with a low resolution Wolfenstein 2 or Doom but racing games should always look crips in this day and age and have STABLE framerate.

@Microjak Let's hope GRID Autosport is better, and maybe who knows EA will finally release a NFS game too.

it looks like ps4 or xbox if you town down the graphics to about half

I guess using Unreal Engine still has its downsides on Swich. Engine aside, I still can't see how they can't match visual fidelity to performance especially comparing it to Fast RMX which is a beautiful game at a solid 60fps. I think in-house engines should be the way to go for these developers when it comes to developing for Switch.

GRID... don’t you pull the same nonsense.

It’s a growing trend to release games broken and then apologise.... or in case of WWE don’t even bother....

We want good quality smooth games especially for the huge premium price point this guys went for.

At 40+ quid.... you need to put quality out...

At £17 and under we can give devs time and support

Simply not good enough

Like a mobile game

Switch has a lot of great games - think some publishers however think they can release any old garbage on it - more so than the other consoles which also have their fair share of crap

I was soooo close to buying this on Best Buy but I can't support this developer. They shouldve been honest and just delayed the game. I sincerely hope they read these comments sections so they get the point.

Returned the game to BestBuy yesterday.

If they fix it up I'll reconsider.

Ok. That’s nice. Care to explain why the Xbox One X version looks like Hell too? I was going to double dip on this game for my Switch but, the X version (which should look awesome) stopped me right in my tracks. I regret buying it digitally. The only thing I can do is erase it. And this is why my friends, physical over digital. Even though I’ve already learned this lesson years ago, this mishap has just reaffirmed it. That was a BIG mistake on my part. Never again.

I'm still interested in the game. If patch for adds this performance mode I'm in. Absolutely. Glad they are working on the game. They should have delayed it, but anyway I can definitely give them a second chance.

Would they have addressed this if nobody had complained?

Sub 30fps is a joke, especially when games like Fast RMX hit 60fps @1080p and kicks ass in both the gameplay and graphics department. This is a dishonest and possibly actionable illegal advertising/business practice; it's an outright lie of a video. I don't know how anyone here is praising them for double patching a game that then still doesn't even hit 30fps in 2019. They knew what they were doing when they put that video up. This is crap. There are so many great games and honest developers on this system that giving these ppl money is a damn shame.

@Stocksy "GRID... don’t you pull the same nonsense."

I trust Feral Interactive.

Every time I hear a dev say yeah there's a patch coming once again I wonder where my paycheck is for being a friggin tester for the company then eh ??? Nothing more then a money grab pure and simple..Fact.

Nice that they're fixing the game, hopefully they kept the game updated. Doesn't matter if it runs at 30fps or 60fps, as long as it runs smooth it would be forgiven.

It’s admirable that they are trying to fix the game, but there’s no excuse for false advertising

@Yorumi Good point in general. I have to take your word for it where the technical/programming bit is concerned, because that's somewhat above my pay grade...

But even if they did all of what you mentioned, then they could have made it work flawlessly on PC, and then downgrade towards consoles from there, and if my understanding of all these processes is correct, that could all have been done without losing a single frame of speed, as long as concessions would have been made on the right components of the game, which they clearly haven't done.

The thing though, is that with this particular game, there's also issues on the other platforms. Not the frame rate, but in the graphics department for sure. It looks kinda meh on all platforms, with little car detail (all cars largely look like they have a GameCube/PS2 paint job, or at least one that isn't quite right for modern day platforms), and a lack of a real sense of speed, which would be one of the minimum requirements for games like these.

On both accounts, they could have definitely learned from a small, but professional team like Shin'en. And on the other platforms, there's also a multitude of racers, both realistic and futuristic, that look and play multiple times better, so how the hell these people seem to think that they can get away with releasing sub-par crap like this, is beyond me.

Sad thing is, that when it was first teased/revealed, I was actually looking forward to it, but now all I am is hugely disappointed, and I will not be buying this on any platform.

Great they are responding to their users and attempting to address these issues rather than just ignore them, but..

28fps after both patches? That's an improvement, but seems like they're just trying to force a game onto the system that the system can't handle. Will they ever be able to achieve acceptable performance on the Switch?

Or maybe they just really need some help with optimization. The game doesn't really look like something the Switch can't handle, relatively speaking.

@Yorumi I get that there's a difference in architecture, but from what I've read from Unreal Engine 4 and it's apps/add-ons, is that the game engine itself can take care of all of that, within its own environment, which should theoretically at the very least make it a lot easier to port games from one platform to another. (edit: final optimization and/or tweaks aside)

In this case, I wouldn't have cared if they had changed all road side objects/assets to flat, wallpapered ones, as long as the game itself ran at a respectable speed, and the cars themselves looked a bit better, but even on Xbox One X it still looks rather underwhelming.

So, ultimately, I still point my finger at the developers themselves, instead of at certain hardware platforms and their shortcomings...

It is good they are working on improvements but the game does really look like a late PS2 game rather than 360/ PS3 game. So there really is no reason the game can't run at a stable framerate of at least 30fps, and also look SIGNIFICANTLY better without that truly awful pop in, than it probably will after the patches.

Also here is an idea for game devs in general: Finish the bloody game before releasing it.

Gamers will eventually lose faith and that will be the source of a potential crash coming to the gaming business. I know I have been close at times to just dropping everything with current gaming and playing retro games instead.

Just cut whatever needs to be cut to make it stable on Switch. And start selling them at a "handheld" pricing like the VITA years.

Crazy if anyone thinks Publishers will spend months optimizing the only ARM RISC version with the lowest install base. And still be in the hole when people keep comparing it to actual home console games.

Really Really tragic...

Below i post an image of Gran Turismo 5 for PS3. A console waaaaaaaaaay less powerfull than the Nintendo Switch.

https://media.playstation.com/is/image/SCEA/bcus-98158-game-ss-5?$MediaCarousel_LargeImage$

So... when you make a game 12 YEARS later than Gran Turismo 5... on a more powerful console than PS3.. you MUST do it better. If you cant... just change profession...

Beware, the publisher behind this is also publishing the upcoming 'Among the Sleep' on Switch.

Better wait until reviews roll in for that one before deciding to buy, too

I mean I give them credit for standing up and speaking out. If after all patches the game is playable and looks decent enough I might bite..... when the price drops. 50 is laughyfor this game.

@Danrenfroe2016 For real and can you imagine if we actually do get a new F-Zero?! Probably at 60 fps. There won't be any room for excuses then.

This is a sad state of affairs. I’m so thankful for social media cos I was gonna drop £40 on this rather ugly mess of a game. However if they get the frame rate stable and eliminate the Cruis’in USA style pop in, with a price drop I might get this. Unlikely.

"We as a studio and a team will learn a lot from this"
..you have learnt that you should not lie, awesome...

This is what i call a roadmap

@Yorumi I completely agree with what you said. Algorithms and data structures should be much better known by computer engineers.

There's a reason why in the joke about the difference between heaven and hell, in heaven the germans are the mechanics and in hell the italians are the mechanics.

Evidence: Fast RMX made by Germans, Xenon Racer made by Italians.

I have lost faith in the game entirely and will be wary of any future product from them

@321gofast Trying to blame the amount of assets in the game (essentially blaming the Switch’a capability) is not honesty, it’s passing the buck. Every developer knows the hardware they are dealing with and if they choose to release the game with bugs / bad performance it’s because they wanted to get a half finished game out there, knowing they have the ability to patch later (or not at all in some cases)... laziness and dishonesty at its best. They knew this ran at sub par levels, marketed it at a higher level in screenshots and yet released it anyway.

@ThanosReXXX @Yorumi There are many games that look fantastic and run flawlessly. Blaming the hardware is lazy and dishonest: The hardware and performance of this game were known before they released it, but they released it anyway, with marketing that showed a different version... relying on the ability to patch later (as do so many other’s these days). No excuse really.

Regardless of what people expect.. as a developer, have some respect for your own work.. I can’t believe they think this is acceptable to the point where they try to justify it by essentially blaming the number of assets.... ‘because the only thing to make games run smoothly is make them sparse’. How about more efficient code? ...Like they’re probably doing in the patches.

How about developers patch all these issues before a games release? Imagine this happening back in the N64 cartridge days. With no internet to patch poorly devrloped games, these companies would go under and no longer be able to release even more badly made sequels. Maybe we should bring back the pre-internet era, just to weed out all the garbage being made these days and see an end to micro transactions.

@MattyHammo Exactly what I always say - DLC is supposed to be a benefit, but it basically enables devs to release half finished products because they can patch.

@3DCloudsJonny Oh wow, had no idea Switch carts were such that extensive of a process. At the end of the day, you all are patching the performance and that’s what matters!

https://shinen.com/press/images/logo.png
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/813l-tloYrL.jpg

All these excuses from devs and publishers on a daily basis.
Nothing but mediocrity.

If you need commercial and critical backlash to teach you about releasing quality software and not lie about it using bullshots, then you're already lost. Sounds like they knew and are back peddling.

Wish I could drop some of these excuses at the point of purchase when asked for my credit card.

"Umm Sorry. You will have to wait 6-8 months while we investigate why my bank won't approve this transaction"

"Look. Real life is hard. Making real money is hard. It's not just a matter of flipping a switch"

"I don't know why using a prerendered photoshopped image of my paycheck isn't good enough....."

"Games are expensive to make hurr durrrrr" meanwhile these companies are posting record profits in the billions on shovelware dlc alone.

We didn't pay a premium for this console to play no name indie shovelware. I can do that on my phone or steam.

@Zyph The problem is nothing to do with the switch or its performance as it has the same exact problems on the other consoles. This is a developer issue period.

@FTL They're doing what some of these other developers seem to be doing, write it once, then see if it can be shoehorned down onto the Switch by deadline day rather than delay it to optimise. Shame about this game because it was on my watch list.

It's not good enough and these excuses are pathetic, too many buildings? So explain Burnout on the Gamecube at 60fps or Project Gotham on the Xbox or the GTA games on PS2, they had traffic and buildings. This game is not exactly GT Sport or Forza Horizon from a visual standpoint so stop blaming the hardware. They should have developed the game around the hardware first and foremost and not release it only to try to fix it later.

Simply put you made a poor performing game and you know you had done but were still more than happy to falsy advertise it as a better product than it really was and take people's money

Now that they’ve updated the screenshots on eShop you can see the game looks like ass.

This late in development and release I kinda gave up waiting for it.

hardware is not the problem. F-zedo Gx in gamecube is the proof. Better and faster.

I'll be very careful about buying a game from these developers again.
Cool there's patches coming, but too little too late. Already moved on.

FAST RMX does it better at almost 2 years old. 60fps. A port of Wipeout 2048, Wipeout HD, Wipeout collection, Wipeout Pulse... any of these ported would have looked and played better.

@321gofast no they do not get an A+ for honesty. They knew the trailer that they had up was deceiving. They should have been honest from the start. Now they have a lot of work to do if they want my money.

Of course they learned something. They learned that people care more about graphics than the actual game itself. Granted the game seemed boring anyway, so the graphics were the only thing going for it. Make sure to develop a fun game next time, and maybe then people won't focus on the mundane details.

Also, here's an idea: Utilize strategies used in PS3 and 360 games for models, and then upgrade from there. Your game will run smoother then, instead of using models from the PC version... Developers seem to forget that polygon count can also strain the system.

They should have beta tested it better. Now, there's no reason to get it physical since you would still need the patches to get the most out of it.

No offense to the devs, but they should have just skipped the Switch. Why release it at all when it's so unplayable?

Thumbs up for effort, but this should have been a skip.

P.S. And Nintendo, please get back to the days of GameCube when it comes to horsepower. Being underpowered was cute with the Wii, but those days are over.

@ThanosReXXX can’t agree more. It sounds like they’re only patching to save face and try and make the money they hoped they’d get before their fake trailers on the Eshop got called out.

Disgraceful.

Kudos to them for not only accepting responsibility but addressing the issues and offering upcoming solutions. If only the bigger studios would take notice and humble themselves but that will never happen.

@Dirty0814 I'm not saying it's not the dev's fault. I'm saying the technology is a factor in general.

This sales guy loves the numbers 1, 2 and 3 doesn't he?

the fact that its gonna take two patches to get the framerate to 24-28fps is so sad...the game runs poorly now and and the fact that two patches both giving it 2-4 fps so thats 4-8 fps total and that only is getting it to the 24-28 fps tells you the game runs at best 20fps its almost unplayable...erm check that it is unplayable for a racing game....this is the problem the switch has for me is yes its getting games like the other systems(doom wolf so on) they look worse then thier counterparts play worse as well as far as framerate goes and fluidity and the worse part is the price for the games are the same...so my point is unless you really want a handheld version of a game you should probably get it on another system if you can.

Sorry 3DClouds but it's too late, you immediately lost me the minute you thought it was okay to advertise this game on the eShop with the presentation of the Playstation 4/Xbox One version.
If you had just not done that and advertised the Nintendo Switch version properly, I would have happily returned my copy and then purchased the Playstation 4 version as then the mistake would have been on me but no, you decided to take this route and for that, I refuse to give you a penny of my hard earned cash.

They can't even hit 60 fps on the PS4 with a game that, let's be frank, looks mediocre at best. 24 fps with those bland visuals on the Switch is a joke. As others already said this speaks volumes about the developer's capabilities.

@Agramonte
The Switch may have the lowest userbase but many multiplatform games have sold more on the Switch than on the PS4/XBO. So properly optimizing a game for the platform seems like a smart move to me if they want it to sell.

Not have much faith in the developers in patching the swich version if they cant even have it look good in the Xbox One X version.

@CaPPa those were mostly budget priced indies that have no graphics to speak of anyway. And they just less ignored on Switch.

And you cant "optimize" beyond hardware limitations. So any "properly optimized multiplatform" will always be less on Switch. Even the badly optimized PS4 version of this game runs and looks better than the Switch version.

The Switch will never win these comparisons... Get it running well - and sell it as the "Cheaper and portable" On Switch.

@FTL I'm not quite sure why you directing this comment at me and @Yorumi, seeing as neither of us were defending this game, which your comment seems to imply. Either that, or I'm completely missing the point you're trying to make, in which case sorry for the misunderstanding, but for now, it isn't really clear to me.

Haha no didn’t think you were defending it was just commenting in-line with the discussion around who’s at fault (the devs). Yorumi made various comments also talking about this (and I’m in agreement).

@gonzilla if they want to turn this around the need to hire panic button and have them start from the ground up on it and release it with a big something special for the people that bought it on day one

This is good. But shouldn't this kind of stuff be done during the development period? Think if Nintendo released Odyssey with no shadows and was like "ok, if you must insist, we've added the shadows and increased fps from 10 to 15, okay?"

@Agramonte
I'm all for cheaper versions of games that cant reach parity with the PS4/XBO versions, or even customized Switch versions (like Konami did with PES on the Wii).

This game has no excuse though. It's not pushing the hardware at all and the PS4 version looks like it should be the Switch version, so its poor on all platforms. Those 'no graphics' budget indies look better than this.

@penamiguel92 Firstly, yes I agree they should have made a good game... and that graphics aren’t everything.. of course... but I’m sorry, in 3D games, in 2019, if your cars don’t have ground shadows, something that was even present in 3D games from the 90’s, and making excuses based on the hardware, then you’re doing something wrong as a developer.

@FTL Yeah, that's true. I thought they at least had GameCube era shadows in there, but I suppose not. Developers these days think that removing visual elements will improve performance, but overlook inefficient code. Even the most powerful computer will struggle to run poorly optimized code.
Edit: I know that from experience. A VR ready laptop was running at 30FPS when I had poorly optimized code running, but then after optimization it rose close to 60 fps.

Honestly these devs just suck at optimizing for the Switch's hardware, which is far more capable than they are making it appear. Look at other racers that have been on the system since the beginning like Fast RMX and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Those games have beautiful graphics(far better than this xenon racer) and run at a silky smooth 60fps. But at least these devs are quickly pumping out updates to try and fix the problems, so I'll give them that. Compare that with games like WWE 2K18 that were forever left in a broken state, permanently ruining the game and robbing people of their hard earned money they paid for it.

@Gen0neD I have the xbox x at home and xenon looks superb - which bit where you not happy with?

@CaPPa you are 100% right the switch is a very important platform. We had hoped to have all the patches in place for launch but we had a two week delay that prevented this. That said I have been at several events and we have had crowds of people playing and loving the game I hope you will give it a shot in the future.

@Yorumi Yeah, I get that it was probably supposed to be a comment to support ours, but initially, I didn't interpret it as such, hence my reaction. Why reiterate what they have done wrong when both you and me had already said all that? That's basically what got me wondering. Hope you didn't mind me tagging you in the conversation...

@Yorumi I figured as much, so I decided to refrain from biting your head off because of it...