The story of the current console war hasn’t been all that complicated. Despite both Microsoft and Sony’s various victories and setbacks, resolution and frame rate of blockbuster titles has been a continuous discussion since the dawn of our current gaming boxes last Fall.
In most cases, PS4 has edged out Xbox One in multi-platform performance, but results with Assassin’s Creed Unity are proving rather unique. Graphical parity will soon become the norm, but it’s clear there are going to be setbacks along the way.
According to Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry, not only do the PS4 and Xbox One versions achieve similar visual quality, but the Xbox One edition actually outperforms the PS4 version in multiple instances. You can check out important snippets from the analysis below — the results may surprise you (each paragraph is a separate, selected excerpt).
Assassin’s Creed Unity runs in 900p across both consoles, sacrificing the raw clarity and additional sharpness of a native 1080p presentation for massively increased detail levels and vastly superior effects work. Anti-aliasing seems to be covered by a variant of FXAA, instead of the custom SMAA solution seen in Black Flag. As a result, the combination of the upscaled framebuffer and the anti-aliasing algorithm adds a considerable amount of blur to the image for a 900p game.
In terms of general graphical quality across the PS4 and Xbox One, it’s clear that Assassin’s Creed Unity is a match in this area. Barring changes in lighting due to differences in cloud coverage and weather – which completely alter shadow placement and how scenes are illuminated – effects work, character and environment modelling and the core artwork are all identical between consoles.
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So far, so good — finally, parity across both consoles! But then the trouble begins. Both consoles appear to suffer from crippling, yet entirely different performance issues at various times, with no clear explanation as to why.
On PlayStation 4, we ran into problems where sudden frame latency spikes would occur for extended periods, causing gameplay to stutter in a stop-start fashion – the issue here is that we are seeing 60-100ms pauses manifest during the action, easily noticeable when playing, and noted on our frame-time graphs (however, frame-rate is an average, so this stutter is smoothed out to a certain degree). Regardless, the end result is an obviously poor gameplay experience.
On Xbox One, we encountered a different issue entirely: a sustained drop in performance so bad that it could only be due to something going seriously wrong with the game’s rendering code. The problem started after dying, with other players unable to revive our avatar – the reviving animation would kick in, but after it had finished we would just fall down and die again. After finally getting brought back to life a minute or so later we were confronted with truly horrendous sub-10fps frame-rates for an extended period, resulting in a stuttering mess of slide-show proportions.
Yikes — that certainly puts a damper on things. Such horrendous accounts almost make it sound as if neither version is worth trying, though the ultimate conclusion proves a bit less gloomy. PC still wins in the end (though by a lesser margin than normal), but which console edition of Unity is the least problem-prone?
As things stand, Assassin’s Creed Unity appears identical across both of the new consoles in terms of the core art and effects work, with these elements rendered to very high standards. Overall, the Xbox One delivers the better gameplay experience due to its ability to deliver higher frame-rates under load. However, this is something of a hollow victory. Performance is still far from ideal and impacts on our enjoyment of the game.
Also See: Assassin’s Creed Unity Allegedly Suffering From Huge Frame Rate Issues
Well, there you have it. Though both console editions of Assassin’s Creed Unity are unfortunately plagued with performance problems, the Xbox One edition, at the end of the day, is less plagued. Hollow victory need.
For me it’s less about which console “won”, and more about Ubisoft successfully achieving graphical parity with a multi-platform title. The sooner other companies follow suit and pull that off regularly, the sooner resolution and frame rate debates will die down for good. Or at least for a few years.
[Via: EuroGamer]
