Ubisoft downgraded the PC version of watch dogs

[Chris Stern]

It is no secret that the version of Watch Dogs we saw at E3 was a diffrent beast graphically then what we ended up getting, but really that is nothing new as often devs use pre-rendered footage in announcement trailers and such to make the game look more appealing then what they will actually deliver but with Watch Dogs the funny thing is those graphics were in the actual release just locked out.

A member of the modding community was poking around the code of Watch Dogs for the PC and found the code and assets for the various graphical features from the E3 versions of the game just locked out and with a simpile config file was able to re-add them to the PC version.

See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b43ZlqPvBDs

The general consensous on the matter is that those assets seen in the e3 versions of the game were locked out due to the current gen console hardware not being able to handle it and as not to rub Sony and Microsoft the wrong way by allowing a graphically superior version on a different platform they just nerfed it all across the board. Since it wouldn't look good for Sony and Microsoft's new hardware which they were touting as the new powerhouse machines.