Microsoft Announce FPS Boost For Xbox Series X/S

I’ll bang on about this until the day I die, and given the stress of being the acting-senior editor this week (thanks, Texas!), that might just be until Tuesday. In an Xbox Wire post on Wednesday as an update to something said in October, the manufacturer noted that they have “partnered closely with developers to enhance the experience while maintaining the game’s original intent” when it comes to select games released on the previous generation. Using the Xbox Series X and S’s fresher hardware, and a little elbow grease from developers, players will be able to run select titles at a smoother frame rate.

Currently, this only works for Far Cry 4, Sniper Elite 4, Watch_Dogs 2, UFC 4, and New Super Lucky’s Tale. I hear something about “One of these things is not like the other.” For players who were playing Watch_Dogs 2, Sniper Elite 4, or Sniper Elite 4 on the Xbox One or PS4, you’ll know full well that the games were hitting 30-ish on a good day. According to the post, these alongside UFC 4 and New Super Lucky’s Tale, are all set to “highlight several different ways that FPS Boost can improve your experience.” They then presented an example that New Super Lucky’s Tale on the Series X can hit 120 FPS, while the Xbox Series S will hit the baseline of 60 FPS.

Somehow I believe this is a bit of a trick, as New Super Lucky’s Tale is rather… simple, in comparison. Some others might not be testing the power of the Xbox One or PS4 to the nth-degree, and hardly touching the Series X/S family, but they may be a better show of the ability to handle complexity within the system. The better question I’d have, since the post claims “[making] the experience even better, all with no work required by the developer,” is both why only these select titles, for now, why not roll it out across all-available? Along with, what did the partnership do, if developers don’t have to put in any extra leg-work?

Either way, what I said I’d bang on about is backward compatibility, something I won’t stop talking about until I hear a reasonable argument otherwise or I am dead. Well, this not only keeps up compatibility with the previous generations, preserving something that could be lost to time, but it also improves it. Using the extra hardware to squeeze what little can be done do with games that would otherwise run awkwardly against modern smoother running games. I don’t see why anyone could bemoan this.