The newest generation of consoles inevitably leads to new skirmishes in the console wars. With the latest PlayStation, the PS5, competing with the new Xbox Series X, battle lines are drawn. Whether it’s criticizing the PS5 for its lack of smooth cross-gen transitioning, to Xbox’s lack of strong exclusives, disputes abound. The latest, however, concerns the racing game Dirt 5 and offers the PS5 a clear advantage.
The game came out on November 6, 2020, and offers versions for current-gen and old-gen consoles. However, the game seemed to favor the Xbox Series X early on. It was the main racing game for Microsoft and was heavily advertised on the Series X. Unfortunately, it turns out that the Xbox version may not be superior to the PS5 version after all.
Xbox users immediately noticed that the 120 FPS mode severely reduced graphical fidelity in Dirt 5 as compared to PS5
This console generation prioritizes two main improvements over the previous generation: power and resolution. A third improvement is the speediness of their storage (SSDs over the old HDDs), but both already come close together. The main appeal of games on either new console should ideally comprise of 4K resolution, at a higher refresh rate. However, despite having the same doubled framerate, the Xbox Series X version had noticeably poorer graphical fidelity than the PS5 version.
Several game recordings and screenshots display clear texture differences in both console versions when 120 FPS mode is active. At the default 60 FPS mode, neither differs significantly. The seeming sacrifice to quality the Xbox Series X version makes to reach 120 FPS, however, is inexcusable. Thus fans across the Internet were outraged.
Amidst all the controversy, one user tried to unsuccessfully show the PS5 version as equally bad
There often come certain masters of their craft, who rightfully earn their place as such. One of these is Digital Foundry, a group that takes pride in knowing all things graphics and resolution wise. If even a pixel is out of place, they’ll know to catch it. Recently, a Twitter user challenged Digital Foundry writer John Linneman, arguing that their images of inferior resolutions showed the PS5 as equally poor.
However, Linneman wasted no time in asking for further proof. When shown the screenshots and video recording in question, with subpar texture quality, he caught the problem early on. Turns out the user was running the PS4 version of Dirt 5, not the PS5 version. So naturally, the graphics wouldn’t hold up to next-gen standards. As we previously discussed here, the PS5 has a bad habit of forcing unaware gamers to run old gen versions of their games.
After all the backlash, Dirt 5’s official account explained the reason for the issue and promised a fix
The official Twitter account of Dirt 5 had to step to address disgruntled gamers. They confirmed firsthand the superior visuals of the PS5’s 120 FPS mode. Furthermore, they stated that the lesser visuals at 120 FPS on Xbox Series X weren’t implemented intentionally at all, as some rumors said. Instead, the issue came from graphical bugs on the Xbox version, and an upcoming patch would fix the problem. Unfortunately, no timeline or ETA for the said patch was confirmed.
Despite this, it is relieving news for gamers who paid full price for their Xbox Series X copy of the game. The statement shows that the developers are aware of the issue, and actively trying to solve it. And someday soon, their version will have equal visual fidelity to the PS5 version.