Microsoft has pioneered plenty of system-level enhancements for Xbox this generation - FPS Boost instantly comes to mind with its frame rate improvements across select Xbox 360 and Xbox One titles. However, some of the team's plans for Xbox Series X|S seemingly never materialised, including its 'Resolution Boost' program; a feature that Digital Foundry's John Linneman discussed on a recent podcast.
Yep, as we spoke about here at Pure Xbox a few months ago, Microsoft had some form of resolution 'auto-boost' program running for Xbox One titles on Xbox Series X and S consoles - but it never released publicly. Here's what Linneman had to say about the feature, which he actually saw running at Microsoft before the new consoles launched:
"There's the Minecraft path tracing on Xbox, and then there was also the Resolution Boost feature, which we got to actually control ourselves - I saw it working, it was a thing, it just never actually came out.
There must have been something that happened where they shifted focus to FPS Boost or... I'm not sure exactly. But clearly, something changed at some point."
Down below is a link to the full clip - where Linneman and the 'Xbox Two Podcast' hosts discuss the phantom feature.
It's a curious one this, because even original Xbox and some Xbox 360 games get resolution boosts - so why the feature never arrived for Xbox One titles remains a mystery. Linneman speculates that Xbox One X patches may have diverted the team's focus away from 'Res Boost', but that was never mentioned by Microsoft.
Maybe one day we'll get the full story, but for now, any sort of Xbox One 'Resolution Boost' feature seems confined to the secret vault at Microsoft HQ.
What do you make of these comments? Disappointed that the feature never came out? Leave your thoughts down below.
Comments 12
This was always my biggest disappointment about the program.
So many awful looking 900p and lower games dropped on the Xbox One, that were running at higher resolutions on the PS4. Really wish we could have seen autoboosts for the likes of Armored Core, Battlefield 4, the Arkham games, etc.so many missed out.
Very disappointed
Maybe Microsoft did a study and found that more people noticed an improvement in framerate as well as improvements with Auto-HDR than people noticed a difference in resolution under regular "couch play" conditions.
Still a shame that particular feature never came to fruition.
Announcing features and quietly canceling them is nothing new for Xbox. Remember Phil Spencer on the E3 stage announcing that Project Scorpio was built for high fidelity VR?
Aw man. I was happier this morning not knowing this was a thing-that-was-cancelled.
Ignorance is bliss and this is disappointing.
@RealFrowns Ugh let's not talk about that.
Especially when they hyped up the partnership with the Oculus, now Meta. And all that came out of that was the Quest coming with an Xbox controller until they could make enough Oculus Touches to bundle instead.
Was always hoping for Air Link with Xbox as as I do for wireless PCVR. Sadly that never came.
@RealFrowns to be fair I don’t recall them ever announcing it. Digital foundry saw it in a lab video. It wasn’t announced by Phil with a trailer. It doesn’t say it on the box. It’s only DF fans who knew it was ever a thing.
That's just unfortunate. Probably very late at this point with priorities changed here and there, so they no longer bother.
Anyway, i would like for next-gen Xbox console to at least have system-level framerate unlocker with adjustable framerate limiter that's applicable to all X1 to XS games.
I don't ever remembering MS offerongy this as a feature. I do remember reading about it but none of the official announcements mentioned it. Or did I miss that? I dunno, to me FPS seems like a bigger focus. Also, wondering if HDR had any impact on their plans to push it forward....
@InterceptorAlpha I played Arkham Knight recently for the rewards points and was genuinely shocked at how bad it looked. I've seen sub 720p games on 360 with better image quality than AK.
I think what happened is that it would get very confusing switching Res boost and FPS boost on and off and trying to find the best default option, whether it be both on or one or the other on, and what resolution to boost to (on two consoles!) on a per game basis would be too time consuming.
They could have given all XB1 games a toggle switch for both in the OS, but they wouldn't want people to have a potentialy poor experience so they would have pushed that idea aside straight away.
I feel a conservative bump of all XB1 games to 1080p on XSS would be a nice feature. XSX would be trickier as XB1X enhanced games run at varying resolutions all the way up to 4K already, now we are getting into time consuming testing again! Yeah, just a bump for XB1 games on XSS would be fine, particularly as it's the higher selling console.
Another thing they could do is bump all back compat OGXB and XB360 games to 1440p and 4K on the XSS & XSX, just exclude all games already boosed (XB1X enhanced back compat games are already given a nice bump on both series consoles anyway). See, even this cut down idea is still complicated! That's why it was scrapped. 💁🏻🤣
Its a shame, as this was working and the digital foundry team were allowed to play with it and see it in action. They've hinted at it ever since, waiting for it to show, but it never has.
Whilst I'd usually pick framerate over res, the importance of a decent high res stable image is high for many people who play on the 65 inch and above 4k tellies that many people have these days. Play a 540p image on an 85 inch 4k telly and you can clearly see that resolution is desirable! 😁
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