Developer Arkane Austin of Redfall confirmed the upcoming vampire-hunting adventure will only be available in Quality Mode on Xbox Series X|S on Wednesday, April 12. As a high resolution is prioritized, the game will be hard-locked to 30 frames per second on Xbox Series X and 1440p on Xbox Series S.
Thankfully, “console wars” aren’t as prevalent as they once were. While gamers will continue to prefer their preferred system, animosity between PlayStation and Xbox users isn’t nearly as prevalent as it was a decade ago. However, there is still a divide between fans of the two platforms, and much of that is due to the first-party exclusives available on each.
But, while PlayStation has been knocking it out of the park with games like God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Horizon Forbidden West, and Ghost of Tsushima for years, Xbox doesn’t have quite the lineup, but Redfall was supposed to be the start of a new era.
Redfall is an upcoming four-player cooperative vampire shooter being created by Arkane Studios Austin, the same group behind Prey.
Xbox has promoted Redfall constantly since its June 2021 announcement, heralding it as the beginning of a brand-new era of first-party exclusives for the console. However, the revelation that the game will be restricted to 30 frames per second at launch actively contradicts Xbox’s central marketing thesis.
Xbox has sought to be the most technologically advanced console on the market for more than five years, and in that regard, it has succeeded. While the Xbox Series X is now technically more impressive than the PlayStation 5, the Xbox One X was the most powerful console of its generation and outperformed the PS4 Pro by a significant margin. However, Xbox’s first-party exclusives haven’t lived up to that marketing.
Since its release in November 2020, the Xbox Series X has only had a handful of first-party exclusives, and while there have been some excellent titles, none of them have pushed the console to its technical limits.
Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite were both impressive games with high frame rates and top-tier visuals, but they were both hampered from reaching their full potential by the requirement that they also run on Xbox One. While Obsidian’s Pentiment had a stunningly unique art style, it wasn’t exactly taxing the Xbox Series X.
Redfall, which will be available in a few weeks, is the first major blockbuster first-party Xbox release of 2023, despite Hi-Fi Rush. Redfall was the first game released, and it was intended to set the tone for Xbox’s future in the next generation. Unfortunately, the game will reportedly launch with a 30FPS frame rate cap.
Even though a performance update is reportedly coming, Redfall’s low FPS doesn’t exactly give Xbox a good impression. Since its release, the PlayStation 5 has been able to make sure that every one of its first-party games reaches 60 frames per second (FPS) on launch, which for many is the absolute minimum that a true next-generation AAA game should be able to do. Redfall already had it tough, and restrictions like these could hurt how well-received it is before release.
Redfall launches on May 2 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
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