Call of Duty on Xbox One sacrifices resolution, gains framerate

Eurogamer's Digital Foundry has done a full work-up of the graphical settings of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare on both the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, and the results may make it easier to choose which system to go with if you haven't yet picked up a copy of the game.

"After a spell in development lingering at 882p and 900p pixel-counts, it's now confirmed that the Xbox One version of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare uses a dynamic scaling model — rendering at resolutions between 1360 x 1080 to the full 1920 x 1080, depending on the intensity of the in-game action," the analysis states.

The Xbox One renders the game at full 1080p during "quiet" sections of play, but when things get tense the resolution is dropped on the fly to retain its 60fps. The PlayStation 4, in contrast, locks the resolution at 1080p while frame rate suffers during the crazier moments of the game.

"We catch dips between the 50-60fps lines [on the PS4] during battles through Seoul's streets — with drops to the high 40s caught when throwing the 'threat' grenades to scan the area for enemies," the article said. "Even in perfectly matched scenes, the Xbox One's performance tends to hold at a perfect 60fps by comparison."

The Xbox One version of the game tends to run at the lower 1360 x 1080 resolution while the PlayStation 4 runs at the full 1080p resolution with fewer frame rate dips. It comes down to preference: Would you rather have a higher resolution during the entirety of the game or is frame rate more important to you?

The PlayStation 4 version of Advanced Warfare seems to suffer from the same issue Diablo 3 had on the Xbox One: The higher resolution is nice, and makes a great marketing point, but gameplay suffers in places.

It's a shame players can't simply choose for themselves.