Warhammer 40K: Darktide finally came to console last week after a long delay from the 2022 PC release, and a new Digital Foundry tech review gives us a glimpse at why this one took the team a fair amount of time to port over.
Darktide is using its own tech, which as the review points out, is quite uncommon these days for a triple-A release like this. The game's tech seems to put these consoles through their paces, resulting in lower specs than you'd probably anticipate on Xbox Series X and S. Here's how the game performs on both consoles:
"Xbox Series X ships with quality and performance modes, targeting 30fps and 60fps respectively, as you may expect [...] There's a dynamic resolution system in play, averaging at around 864p in performance mode, rising to 1368p in the quality alternative, though the dynamic figure varies according to content.
Series S gets just one visual mode, which targets 30fps. [...] The overall presentation is a little cruder than Series X, with harsher jagged edges and a rougher portrayal of fine details. That's because resolution has been cut down further, averaging around 720p. It's a pretty harsh cutback for Microsoft's junior console, and makes the lack of a 60fps performance mode here quite understandable - the image would simply look too rough."
In the video up above, Xbox Series X's performance mode looks graphically quite similar to the Series S running Darktide at 30FPS, so that goes a long way towards explaining why the budget console misses out on a 60FPS performance mode.
Generally speaking, we think the game looks quite impressive and certainly has its own unique flair. After watching this tech review, we're tempted to give Darktide a go on Xbox Game Pass and see what we think of this new co-op shooter!