PUBG On Xbox One And Xbox One X Plagued By Horribly Inconsistent Performance
Unfortunately, the game appears to be rife with performance issues that mar the gaming experience. Digital Foundry, which often gets the inside track on anything and everything related to Microsoft's Xbox hardware, conducted a thorough investigation into the performance of the PUBG on the Xbox One and Xbox One X, and the results weren't pretty.
On the Xbox One, gamers are faced with low-resolution textures and overall poor performance, with significant stuttering and lengthy periods below 20 fps. "PUBG is borderline horrendous - an assault of low quality artwork, jarring pop-in and disappointing performance," writes Digital Foundry. "Input lag also feels off - whether that's down to deadzone issues on the analogue sticks or the variable frame-rate remains to be seen."
You would think that the much more powerful Xbox One X -- the most powerful gaming console on the planet -- would fare better. It does, but only barely. While image quality improves considerably thanks to higher resolution textures and native 4K rendering, the game still lags behind 4K-capable PCs in overall appearance. On average, the Xbox One X rendering at 4K offers a 5 to 10 fps advantage over the Xbox One rendering at Full HD (1080p) in "like scenes".
Digital Foundry tried its best to compare the two consoles in like environments and came up with the following analysis:
With the title tracking gameplay from up to 99 other players, clearly there's a lot going on behind the scenes that could impact performance and we're willing to bet that PUBG can be both CPU or GPU-bound at any moment. In order to get accurate metrics from like-for-like scenarios on base and X hardware, we set-up a small squad and played together on the same server. Across one 22-minute game, we noted an average frame-rate of 25.6fps on the base console, rising to 27.6fps on its more powerful 4K-orientated counterpart.
But, the performance issues were likely to be expected given the 30 fps cap, and the fact that PUBG already has a wealth of issues to contend with on the PC platform. In fact, the game isn't set for its "official" PC release until December 20th. In the end, Digital Foundry expressed disappointment with the fact that even with Microsoft's heavy involvement, PUBG's lingering issues weren't addressed for the Xbox One family.
"With the quality of the talent deployed on the title, we expected more," wrote the publication. "Just a consistent frame-rate would prove transformative for the quality of the experience. We'll be tracking the progress of this title as it evolves, but for now, we'd consider caution before any purchase."
