Can BF4 answer CoD Xbox One 720p questions?

For a few days now, the internet has been abuzz with claims that the next-gen Call of Duty: Ghosts on the Xbox One, wouldn't natively run at 1080p, but would instead run at 720p and then be upscaled the somewhat standard-these-days, HD resolution. As more information has come out, that seems more likely to be true, but the question remains of how much of a difference it will make. Now we have some screenshots and video comparisons between the platforms on Battlefield 4, which may help us figure it out.

While the new CoD and Battlefield games are of course different, their detailing shouldn't be too far off the mark, making the former a good game to compare PS4 and Xbox One capabilities. Unfortunately for Microsoft though, the detail difference is there and post-processing is drastically different between the two platforms. According to the Eurogamer breakdown, the PS4 is able to put out a 900p resolution (1600 x 900 pixels) whereas the Xbox One indeed does restrict itself to 720p (1280 x 720 pixels) – a resolution that most PC gamers haven't touched since their 4:3, 19″ monitor days.

“Stupid dog took all our frame rates.”

However what's perhaps more interesting than the resolution difference, is the post-processing that's been added to the Xbox One version in order to preserve detail and hide the shortcomings of the upscaling. It creates a much more contrasting colour palette, with heaps of shadows hiding detail that's much more visible on the PC and PS4.

Both consoles still seem to struggle with aliasing, especially on thin objects like telephone lines and in some instances, the PS4's motion blur seems to actually let the Xbox One catch up in terms of clarity. Performance wise were told it's possible to achieve near 60 frames per second throughout, but its never a guarantee and there have been sacrifices in terms of draw distance  and effects like extra debris, which will feature on the PC version at higher detail levels.

Perhaps what will be the most interesting aspect of these games, is how they look and handle on current-gen hardware. Since we're at the end of the generation, developers are well versed in squeezing every last drop from the Xbox 360 and PS3 hardware, despite them both being over seven years old. It may well surprise us what they can do.

Kitguru Says: Of course if you want the best resolution with the highest detail for the next Call of Duty, your best bet is the PC version, since you can manually adjust everything to suit your tastes. With the graphics card war heating up at this time of year, it's not a bad time to upgrade in readiness either. 

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