The previous ‘next gen’ Call of Duty title, Ghosts stirred a great deal of disappointment among the Xbox faithful when revealed the title would run at the lowly resolution of 720P. But SledgeHammer games co-founder Michael Condrey via Twitter has confirmed that the Xbox One resolution of Advanced Warfare won’t be 720P, but stopped short of confirming the final native resolution.
When a user asked if the title would indeed run at a higher resolution than Ghosts, Michael Condrey simply responded “yes, higher on XboxOne than Ghost.” but without further clarification as to the final resolution of the game would be. It’s possible (likely, actually) SledgeHammer are still nailing the final resolution down.
Known industry insider Tidux has said via Twitter Microsoft have stepped in to help SledgeHammer squeeze better performance out of the Xbox One, and push towards closer parity with Sony’s Playstation 4 system.
“”#SG has problems with the dev of their #XboxOne version of CODAW. MS is on the case and help 2 try 2 get it at the same level as the #PS4” said Tidux.
Remember, this isn’t the first time Microsoft helped out developer who were trying to get the most out of the Xbox One. Both Destiny and Diablo 3 enjoyed Microsoft’s intervention to push towards higher resolution and performance. The fact of the matter is, in such large Triple A releases, being the ‘best’ platform for the game is important, particularly if a user is looking to purchase the console along with the game.
It’s fair to say there’s a huge number of gamer’s who’re yet to make the next generation move, and Microsoft won’t let Sony press an advantage if it can do something about it. The Xbox One has dropped in price (at least here in the land of tea and crumpets) by the princely sum of £20. Hardly a kings ransom, but a saving is a saving I suppose.
The biggest issue here is of course, raw horse power. It’s fair to say that Call of Duty : Ghosts was a bit of a mess. The Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC iteration of the title were all equally messy. The PC version randomly suffering from head scratchingly poor performance at times, particularly when one takes into account the less than stellar visuals that were on offer.
Advanced Warfare is certainly more visually impressive (despite still having the associated decaying stench of the last generation of consoles with a tight stranglehold over its development). But, with a longer development cycle it’s fair to say we’re all expecting much better visuals and performance than what we’ve experienced in the past.
As for the final resolution of the Xbox One version of CoD Advanced Warfare, it’s up in the air. There are some rumors which state the title will be running at 886P but considering the development cycle is not finished, I would take those rumors with a grain of salt.
This has got to be a bit of a bitter pill for Microsoft to swallow, considering the Xbox 360 and CoD were synonymous with one another. Indeed, the Xbox 360 versions typically ran with both higher frame rates and native resolutions, and often had that sought after DLC before the PS3.
Reading through various forums and listening to various other opinions on this, and the consensus is fairly unanimous among those with an interest in technology. It’s great the Playstation 4 is running in native 1080P (but of course, we’ll have to see how stable the frame rates are… don’t worry, we’ll cover the frame rate and graphics comparisons on RGT), but in an emerging 4K world, should 1080P be cause for celebration?
Sure, currently a thousand dollars is required for a basic 4K set (unless you’re happy to play in 30 hz, in which case more power to you), but prices are crashing pretty damn quickly. Since upscaling the image induces latency in the image, this could be an issue. Also, an upscaled image isn’t as impressive as true 4K. With technology moving so fast, how long can we really expect this generation of consoles to last, when even Ice Team’s Cort Stratton (from Sony’s elite programming squad) admits the hardware is out of date?
Perhaps the upcoming DX12 and DX11.3 will help the Xbox One out, eh?