Ubisoft released its first major patch for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla last week, and luckily for Microsoft, the 1.0.4 update improves the performance of the Xbox Series X version substantially. This has been documented in Digital Foundry’s latest video, which confirms a solid 60 FPS experience in Performance Mode that’s largely consistent with how the game runs on the PlayStation 5.
Ubisoft seems to have taken the lazy route instead of legitimately optimizing the game, however. As Eurogamer explains in a complementary article, it turns out that Ubisoft simply increased the range of its dynamic resolution scaling to improve performance on the Xbox Series X—instead of 1440p, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla may now dip to 1188p on Microsoft’s console to maintain 60 FPS in Performance Mode.
“At launch, the ‘window’ of potential resolutions for both consoles scaled from 1440p at the lowest to circa 1728p at the highest – 67 per cent to 80 per cent of full 4K resolution on both axes,” Eurogamer wrote. “This remains the case for the PlayStation 5 version of the game, but lower bounds for Series X has reduced to 1188p – 55 per cent of full 4K.”
Eurogamer notes that the Xbox Series X version tends to run at higher resolutions and only drops down to 1188p when it has to, but this is a bad look for what’s being billed as the “world’s most powerful console.” We’re hoping that Ubisoft delivers a genuinely optimized version for Microsoft, as the hardware in its flagship console can’t possibly be worse than the PS5’s.
This is also clearly a Ubisoft issue based on the other odd bugs and glitches that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla players are experiencing. These include stuttery camera movement during cinematics, which is reportedly present in both the Xbox Series X|S and PC versions.