NINJA GAIDEN 4's 120fps Push Relied on Early Scope Cuts, CEDEC Talk Shows
The talk's core method is not brute-force optimization but deciding what to cut early and setting different frame targets per scene, a template other action games chasing high frame rates can copy.
Reporting from 1 source: GameBusiness.jp.
At CEDEC 2026, four engine engineers from I.Meisters and PlatinumGames explained how NINJA GAIDEN 4 reaches 120fps on current consoles. The project began in August 2024 with the game not even running at 30fps, and the team set a four-month target for a 120fps vertical slice. Their method combined early scope cuts, per-scene frame targets, and a QA-engine iteration loop that let the game team finish optimization across all stages by February 2025.
The 120fps target leaves only 8.3 milliseconds of processing per frame, and the team judged success with four lines: a hitch line at 20 milliseconds that no single frame may cross, plus OK, safe, and NG lines for sustained and momentary load. Scenes were split by priority, with boss battles held to 115fps or higher, mid-path and mob fights to 105fps, and quality-first 'beautiful corners' to 80fps. Cutscenes were excluded and pre-rendered. On the CPU side, the team dropped a dedicated game thread for a job system modeled on a Square Enix talk from CEDEC 2016, reaching 87 percent CPU utilization in battle scenes.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.