Accusations about the lack of horsepower in the Xbox One compared to the PS4 have been thrown around since the first games were revealed for the next generation consoles. Other developers have mentioned having a hard time getting Xbox One titles to run at full 1080p resolutions with steady framerates, and now the developer of Lords of the Fallen is joining that chorus.
Speaking to IGN, developer CI Games said that they're confident of achieving a steady 30 frames per second framerate, because reaching the higher resolutions at 60fps has proven unfeasible. The developers are unsure they will be able to get the Xbox One running 1080p smoothly at all, but are more confident about the PS4.
"We definitely won't be below 30fps, definitely," executive produce Tomasz Gop said. "I think if we have to choose between resolution and framerate, we'll probably choose to go full HD 1080p and have a stable, rock-solid 30fps, rather than try to lower the resolution and push it to 60fps because we believe this game looks pretty good, so we'd rather have a decent resolution to show it off."
"We're working very hard right now to deliver PS4 and Xbox One in 1080p but I can't confirm whether it's possible. It's probably easier for me to confirm it'll happen for PlayStation 4, because it appears on this one we're almost nailing it and pretty much there. For Xbox One though, it's slightly tougher and we're still working on it, so I can't confirm that yet."
It's a personal preference whether someone values framerate over resolution or vice versa, but the existence of this tradeoff in any form leaves many enthusiasts frustrated. Given that we've just entered a new console generation, it's fair to say most people expected 60fps and 1080p to be a minimum standard, but developers struggling with some titles (especially on Xbox One) is disheartening.
I'm sure most games will still look great (with better framerates and resolutions than the average person will care about), and hopefully studios learn to optimize their use of the hardware as we go forward--I think everyone would like to hear about a decreasing number of these situations over the next few years.