The folks over at Digital Foundry are back again with yet another Xbox-game-on-PS5 analysis today, and this time it's for Obsidian's fantastic survival action-adventure game Grounded - which just arrived on PS5 back on April 16th.
And boy, is this one interesting! The outlet has discovered that there quite a few differences between the Xbox Series X and PS5 versions, particularly in terms of frame rate where the PS5 is significantly lagging behind right now.
"Xbox Series X is a solid 60fps throughout, barring occasional one-frame drops and the odd hitch while auto-saving kicks in..."
"Switching to PS5 we see a very different result. On its latest patch 1.02, we're getting a 60fps line in parts, but too often we see it plummeting into the 50s or as low as 45fps."
This is particularly surprising as the PS5 version is also operating at a lower dynamic range right now (PS5 is between 1080p and 1215p compared to the 1512p and 4K of the Xbox Series X), so DF says it's "it's in need of better optimisation clearly".
However, the PS5 version also has a few advantages over the Xbox Series X version, such as improved geometry LODs and higher quality shadows. Nevertheless, the outlet says Xbox has the lead over PS5 for now:
"Grounded's introduction to PS5 and Switch isn't a smooth one then, and especially running on Sony's latest hardware, the slipshod performance on PS5 is hard to excuse. Running between 45 and 60fps, with worse image quality than on Series X, albeit with higher settings elsewhere, is far from an optimal balance. So many Xbox Game Studios titles landing on PS5 have done so with unusual differences - like the differing shadows in Hi Fi Rush - but at least performance has been equivalent. For Grounded though, in a cross-play game between a PS5 and Series X, I know which one I'd rather play right now."
As for the Nintendo Switch, it's pretty much as expected - the game doesn't look great and can drop to a resolution of 360p at its worst, while texture pop-in is an issue as well. 30fps performance is OK, but with uneven frame-pacing.
There's a lot more to dig into here, so we recommend checking out the video for the full analysis. It'll be particularly interesting to see how Grounded evolves on PS5 over time, and whether complete parity will eventually be achieved.