In case you missed the big news, Grand Theft Auto IV is now available to play on the Xbox One, bringing one of Rockstar Games' most beloved titles from the previous generation to Microsoft's new machine courtesy of backwards compatibility. But now the question remains: Does the game run better on the Xbox One or the Xbox 360?
The answer to that question might surprise you. The folks over at Eurogamer are apparently really into comparisons like these, and they've got folks currently working on GTAIV as well as its popular DLC chapters, The Lost and the Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. Their findings seem positive at first, as they've discovered that GTA IV on the Xbox One can hit a higher framerate than the same game on the Xbox 360. Unfortunately, there's more to it than that.
According to the report, the game's framerate is uncapped on the Xbox One, meaning it should be able to handle more brute force lifting in the graphics department. The original report states that the backwards compatible version of GTA IV does in fact hit numbers above the 30-frames standard of the last generation, but it also dips lower. The real issue, though, is how those frames are presented. The report states that there's nothing super consistent about the games frame-pacing on the Xbox One, meaning that it simply doesn't "look right." That can probably be addressed in a patch, but it makes for a rare miss when it comes to the quality of games on the Xbox One when compared to their Xbox 360 counterparts.
The report uses another Rockstar game as an example, stating that Red Dead Redemption and its Undead Nightmare DLC run better on the Xbox One, but don't suffer from the framerate issues seen within Grand Theft Auto IV. Since RDR came after GTAIV, maybe it has something to do with the technology running under the hood; something that was subtly changed between the two titles. Or maybe its just something that needs to be tweaked on the Xbox One version of the game.
The suggested fix would be to move GTA IV to a 30fps cap. You wouldn't get to enjoy those sections that run at a faster rate, but you also wouldn't suffer from inconsistency throughout, making the game look good, only more smooth on the Xbox One.
The folks at Eurogamer are promising a more detailed report once they've had time to dig in deeper, so that's something worth looking out for if you're into this kind of thing. As for our readers, we'd be interested in hearing how your backwards compatible games have been running on Xbox One. For GTA IV in particular, have you noticed these issues? Let us know in the comments below.
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