


Respawn Entertainment’s Abbie Heppe recently confirmed the beta’s oddball native resolution, and the reactions have been mixed. On one hand, this is good news. Rumors were spreading that Titanfall could end up running at 720p, so this is a step up. On the other hand, the dream of running at 1080p on the Xbox One seems dead at this point. Even with the 53Mhz GPU bump and additional power gained by disabling the Kinect’s video features, a make-or-break game like Titanfall still can’t achieve 1080p.

Titanfall Controller Keep in mind, this is an unfinished product. It’s possible that by the time the game ships next month, the development team will be able to achieve higher resolutions. Are you skeptical? Just look at Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. That game shipped on the PS4 running at 900p, but an optimization patch enable that version to render at 1080p natively. It’s within the realm of possibility that the final version of Titanfall could be running at a higher resolution on the Xbox One, but don’t hold your breath for 1080p.

So, why can’t Titanfall reach 1080p? It all comes down to frame rate. Twitch games, like competitive first-person shooters, require smooth frame rates for precise aiming and maneuvering. If the game dips to 20fps during a frantic moment, that could easily turn the tide in a battle. For a game like this, the priorities are obviously on visual polish and frame rate, so resolution takes a back seat.

Maybe if this were an Xbox One exclusive, the development team could have built and optimized the engine for 1080p rendering at 60fps like Forza Motorsport 5. However, this game has to run on the Xbox 360 and PC as well, so other considerations had to be made. It’s certainly not impossible to make games run at 1080p on the Xbox One, but it seems as if it’s more trouble than it’s worth for a game like Titanfall.