Microsoft’s new FPS Boost feature, which is capable of doubling (and sometimes quadrupling) the frame rates of legacy games on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles, will only be available for select backward compatible titles. The lack of global support has been confirmed by director of program management Jason Ronald, who spoke during Major Nelson’s 733rd podcast and provided insight as to why the feature can only be implemented with specific titles. The primary reason is that FPS Boost can really screw up the original speed of animations and physics.
“Unfortunately, this technique does not work on all titles,” Ronald admitted. “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.”
Ronald didn’t elaborate any further on the technicalities as to why FPS Boost would only work with select legacy titles or what specific games were broken with the feature enabled, but he did promise Xbox Series X|S users that there would be a lot more boosted games on the way. As Microsoft noted in a news post on Xbox Wire last week, the first batch of FPS Boost games will comprise Far Cry 4, New Super Lucky’s Tale, Sniper Elite 4, UFC 4, and Watch Dogs 2.
“This week is just the first set of titles that we’re releasing,” Ronald noted. “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.”