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Making Backward Compatible Games Even Better with FPS Boost
As we detailed in October, with the increased CPU, GPU and memory from our new consoles, all of your existing games look and play better. With certain titles, we can make the experience even better, all with no work required by the developer, and no update needed by the gamer. To that end, the backward compatibility team has developed FPS Boost, which employs a variety of new methods for nearly doubling (and in a few instances, quadrupling) the original framerate on select titles. Higher, steadier framerates make games visually smoother, resulting in more immersive gameplay. We partnered closely with developers to enhance the experience while maintaining the game’s original intent. And while not applicable to all games, these new techniques can push game engines to render more quickly for a buttery smooth experience beyond what the original game might have delivered due to the capabilities of the hardware at the time.
We’re excited to announce the first assortment of backward compatible titles that will support FPS Boost – available beginning today – are Far Cry 4, New Super Lucky’s Tale, Sniper Elite 4, UFC 4, and Watch Dogs 2. We chose this initial collection of titles not only because they are popular among fans, but to highlight several different ways that FPS Boost can improve your experience. For example, New Super Lucky’s Tale can now run up to 120 frames per second (fps) and UFC 4 delivers improved framerate performance specifically on Xbox Series S and can now run at 60fps.
This is just the beginning. We will announce and release more titles featuring FPS Boost soon, as well roll out new menu icons and system settings in an upcoming system update. Starting this Spring, you can go into the “Manage Game” section for any title, where you’ll be presented with a new “Compatibility Options” button that will allow you to toggle FPS Boost (as well as Auto HDR) on or off. There will also be a new indicator informing you when a game is running with FPS Boost whenever you hit the Xbox Button on your controller. You decide how you want to play your favorite games, whether in its original form or with FPS Boost.
We’re very excited for fans to experience FPS Boost and in the coming months, we’ll be announcing more and more games that support this function.
At Xbox, we believe your gaming investments should come with you, which is why we’ve brought forward thousands of games from four generations to look and play better than ever on the Xbox Series X|S. We can’t wait for you all to give these titles a spin, and to reveal more FPS Boost games very soon.
Microsoft today lifts the lid on its brand new FPS Boost technology - a series of system level tweaks that allows legacy Xbox One titles to run with twice or even four times the frame-rate on Xbox Series consoles. Far Cry 4, Watch Dogs 2, UFC 4, Sniper Elite 4 and New Super Lucky's Tale are the first five titles to support the new feature - and we've had a chance to test them all. First impressions are impressive and the gaming experience is transformed on every game.
The difference with FPS Boost is that Microsoft's Xbox compatibility team is working its magic this time around to adjust frame-rate caps at the Direct3D level, increasing performance within the system, without any changes at all to the original code. As far as the games are concerned, they're still running at their original frame-rates.
In prior PR from Microsoft, the Xbox team have talked about doubling performance and at the basic level, that's exactly what's delivered. All of the five titles revealed today operate at 30 frames per second on Xbox One S - and four of them now run at 60fps on both Xbox Series consoles. The exception is New Super Lucky's Tale: this targeted 4K60 on Xbox One X and 1080p30 on Xbox One S. This is bumped up to 4K120 and 1080p120 on Series X and S consoles respectively - so yes, that's a quadrupling of performance comparing One S to Series S. There are no other changes to the game in terms of visuals, but the increase to performance is palpable: as we saw in Ori and the Will of the Wisps, platform games deliver a beautifully crisp experience at 120fps - and the Series consoles fully deliver. New Super Lucky's Tale is on Game Pass, meaning easy access for Series users to check this one out.
All of these FPS Boost-enhanced games are now available to play for Xbox Series users and all of them are well worth investigating - and we suspect that like us, you'll be impressed by the improvement here and left hungry for more, especially for Xbox One X enhanced games that should deliver a bit more bang for the buck for Series X users. If there's one slight disappointment, it's that three of the five games released today never received Xbox One X upgrades. Therefore, the improvement is performance-based alone, and a low resolution experience does stick out a touch on Series X consoles. Regardless, unlocked performance upgrades for legacy games is a very good thing - especially as developer updates for older titles are likely to be thin on the ground. FPS Boost also integrates with Auto HDR too and can look great, especially on Far Cry 4 - another reason to revisit a really impressive game.
Per Jason Ronald's interview "For the games that are currently in testing, we expect to release new games every couple of weeks over the next couple of months with this capability enabled."
more heat than light wrote:I would rather have more games.
Frank wrote:more heat than light wrote:I would rather have more games.
Yeah, definitely this. Really hope they're not going to be spending too much of their resource on just improving what's already there when there's still so much they could be working on bringing across
Buffalo wrote:Damnation, for Frank I suppose.