Why PS4′s Assassin’s Creed IV needs a patch to run at 1080p

Native 1080p games are a huge draw for the next-gen consoles, but it’s been a long and arduous road to get there. It’s no surprise that exclusive first-party games can hit that mark, but a number of multi-platform releases are also aiming for the 1080p sweet spot. Unfortunately, not every game will be able to make it work. While titles like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed IV weren’t able to ship at a native 1080p, the PS4 will allow the developers to patch in the necessary optimizations at a later date.

On the official Ubisoft blog, Community Manager Gary Steinman explains that Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is actually rendering at 900p on PS4 at launch, but a 1080p patch will follow shortly after launch day. Similarly, Activision shipped Call of Duty: Ghosts running at 720p, but a patch will enable full 1080p support. This news is unexpected, but certainly welcome by gamers.

While Activision claims the initial 720p cap was due to a “configuration issue,” Ubisoft is more forthcoming. Fundamentally, it came down to frame rate in the open world of Assassin’s Creed. In the crunch leading up to release, the engineers didn’t have the resources to get the resolution up to 1080p without taking a dip in the frame rate. In the time since the game shipped, the engineers were able to spend their time developing a number of optimizations designed to enable 1080p rendering while maintaining a solid 30fps.

While this certainly makes sense, it’s somewhat surprising to see happen with these major titles. Call of Duty: Ghosts is jumping from 921,600 pixels (1280×720) to 2,073,600, and Assassin’s Creed IV will be going from 1,440,000 pixels (1600×900) to 2,073,600. That is a drastic increase in resolution, and it just goes to show how hot these consoles are coming in at launch. While the launches seem to be going smoothly so far, there is no question at this point that some extra time in the oven would have alleviated early issues like this.

Meanwhile, we can expect 720p and 900p to be common native resolutions for many games over on the Xbox One at launch. For example, Forza Motorsport 5 will be able to hit 1080p, but the Microsoft-published Ryse: Son of Rome will not.

As developers become more familiar with the hardware, we’ll likely see performance improvements, but don’t assume 1080p patches will become the norm. This is definitely out of the ordinary for console games, and it’s largely due to the unique problems that surround modern platform launches.

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