For many years, PC and console games had a stark divide in terms of the number of graphical options they exposed to players. PC games have had complex options menus for years, with plenty of scope for players to balance fidelity and performance, while most console games offered a single curated experience for their user-base. Recently though, that division has started to shrink, with the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2020 fostering in an age of quality and performance preferences and 120Hz or VRR system-level toggles. Now, console players may need to make a handful of choices to tailor their experience, which makes it harder for analysts and players alike to discover the best possible combination.

It's that scenario that Digital Foundry supporter Dylan has in mind when they suggest a solution to the problem: adding "a bunch of settings that don't actually do anything" - placebo options. On the outside, this (facetious) suggestion does solve the issue, letting console players experiment to their heart's content without jeopardising the curated play experience designed by the developers.

The idea is a funny one, but like the real-world examples it's based on, it's ultimately a source of frustration for all parties rather than a framework for a better future.

Should consoles offer "placebo" graphical settings menus?

Digital Foundry contributors already spend a lot of time checking and verifying what settings actually do on PC and console alike, and coming across a setting that appears to do nothing at all is the nightmare scenario. Is the setting actually broken? Does it only take effect in an area of the game you haven't tested? Or is there a bug preventing it from being activated in the first place?

These sorts of questions can take hours to resolve, and you can imagine that players and QA testers alike could spend a huge number of man-hours in similar culs-de-sac. We recently covered Starfield's non-functional v-sync toggle, for example, and there have been dozens of other examples over the years. One common ongoing example is the PSSR toggle on PS5 Pro, which ought to result in the new version of PSSR being used, but often does nothing at all - something that's hard to spot without proper video capture and analysis tools.

We've already spoken at length about our feelings on games with a huge number of modes - such as the 22 (!) permutations available in Starfield's on PS5 Pro - but the basics bear repeating. We'd like to see developers offer a single well-curated experience for each frame-rate target, or even choosing a single lead mode that offers a clear vision of how a game should be experienced as we saw with Doom: The Dark Ages. More options beyond that are fine, but they should at least present a viable alternative to the core experience, rather than being non-functional or offering a strictly worse trade-off than existing modes (eg allowing performance mode settings at 30fps, when higher-quality visuals would run just as smoothly).

The placebo effect concept for settings also extends to system-level options, such as console dashboard resolutions. Many users incorrectly believe that lowering the output resolution of the console itself will improve the internal rendering performance of a game. While this is generally a misconception, there are rare cases - like Hitman: World of Assassination on Switch 2 - where a system-level override can unexpectedly influence a game's performance, which fuels the fires of misinformation for other titles.

Finally, the power of placebo is often visible following the release of updates that contain patch notes that mention performance improvements. These kind of maintenance or bug-fix updates can be perceived as major overhauls, with users reporting improvements to elements that haven't actually changed if you look back to prior versions. Similarly, the update process can also provide the same "turn it off and on again" fixes that appear with a regular game restart, which can complicate pre- and post-patch testing and lead to erroneous results.

In any case, while it can be fascinating to test different graphical modes and other settings on console, there are already too many situations where settings genuinely are placebos. Please don't add any more on purpose!