Mario Kart 8 Drops Down to 59fps in Performance Analysis

Digital Foundry have uncovered some surprises when analysing the performance of Mario Kart 8 on Wii U.

During the Cubed3 playthrough and review of the game, framerate issues were nonexistent to the naked eye, with the game appearing to run at a solid 60fps in one or two players and at 30fps with three or four.

Eurogamer believes that, despite having a "phenomenal attention to detail", the game is "one that doesn't quite match the impossibly high level of polish" set by Nintendo.

The team uncovered that the game operates at 720p (1280x720) and is only scaled up to 1080p if the output screen supports it. The report noted that with the lack of anti-aliasing, there have been "obvious stair-stepping and pixel-crawling artifacts throughout most scenes," something that had been pointed out in our own review. Despite this, it does "spoil an otherwise magnificent visual package".

As for framerate performance, Digital Foundry states that, during normal gameplay, the game continually drops down to 59fps and "once it is seen, it can't really be unseen," oddly only happening when CPU racers are on the track.

Despite this, Eurogamer believe that the issues "shouldn't impact the experience for most people" and not to "let these minor polish issues keep you away from the game - this is Mario Kart at its best and brightest."

Do you think the framerate issues/graphical problems could really detract from the Mario Kart 8 experience?