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.
We've seen a doubling of performance on older games running on the new wave of consoles already, of course. We've looked at Days Gone, Ghost of Tsushima, The Last Guardian and God of War on PlayStation 5, while legacy titles running with unlocked frame-rates can also tap in to the extra horsepower of Xbox Series consoles and PS5. 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.
