Xbox’s dev boss says FPS Boost won’t be possible to implement on all games

Xbox’s platform development boss has said that the FPS Boost feature introduced this week won’t work with all games.

FPS Boost is a system-level feature that increases performance in select backwards compatible games without requiring changes to the original game code, according to Microsoft.

The feature will see supported Xbox One games run at up to four times their original frame rate. The first titles to support the feature  are Far Cry 4, New Super Lucky’s Tale, Sniper Elite 4, UFC 4, and Watch Dogs 2.

However, speaking in the latest Major Nelson podcast, director of program management Jason Ronald emphasised that FPS Boost will not be possible to implement on all legacy titles, because of the way in which some games are programmed to work with their original frame rates.

He said: “This week is just the first set of titles that we’re releasing. We have many more titles which are in development and in testing right now, and we’ll continue to release more titles over the coming months.

“Unfortunately, this technique does not work on all titles,” he added. “In some cases, the way in which the game was originally written… as we’ve done some testing of some of these titles we’ve seen animations run twice as fast, or physics running twice as fast.

“What’s critically important to us is we always respect the original intent of the creator, so that’s why we’re able to do that at the platform level and then we work with the developer and the publisher and make sure that they still believe that this really aligns with what they originally intended.”

The current six FPS Boost games were chosen specifically for how effective the feature was at improving their performance, in addition to their popularity, Xbox’s senior program manager Paul Eng explained earlier this week.

“For example, New Super Lucky’s Tale can now run up to 120 frames per second (fps) and UFC 4 delivers improved framerate performance specifically on Xbox Series S and can now run at 60fps.”

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As noted in Digital Foundry’s analysis of the updated titles, while FPS Boost increases frame rates it does not increase the resolution of the legacy games, some of which still run at sub-1080p.

“Regardless, unlocked performance upgrades for legacy games is a very good thing – especially as developer updates for older titles are likely to be thin on the ground,” it said.

Microsoft says it will announce and release more titles supporting FPS Boost soon, and that it will roll out new menu icons and system settings in an upcoming system update.