The Star Wars Battlefront beta only runs at 720p on Xbox One, 900p on PS4

The Star Wars Battlefront beta only runs at 720p on Xbox One, 900p on PS4

Star Wars Battlefront is going to be a big deal. This long-awaited follow up to the PS2-era franchise is set to launch within a month of Star Wars Episode VII, and the nostalgia alone will inevitably propel the sales sky high. Over the last couple of days, EA has been running a beta test of across the PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and I’ve been watching it closely.

Now that the public has had an opportunity to see first-hand what DICE has been working on, let’s examine how this beta holds up from a technical perspective. Of course, the final release may be significantly different, so take everything here with a grain of salt.

Let’s start off with the bad news: the PS4 version is only running at 1600×900. It’s definitely disappointing, but as you can see above, the end result still looks fairly solid. The visual fidelity is roughly on-par with the “high” settings on the PC build, but the pop-in is substantially more noticeable on the PS4.

While the game still can’t quite maintain a solid 60fps frame rate in some areas, there is hope. The dips are smaller than we’ve seen in previous builds, and it’s not unusual for developers to be optimizing performance right up until release day — sometimes months after release as well.

Weirdly, the split-screen multiplayer actually halves the target frame rate to 30fps, and renders two views at 1920×540 (making a complete 1080p picture). After spending so much time enjoying Metal Gear Solid V at 60fps, I’m a bit spoiled. I think I’ll pass on this mode all together.

If you want a better look at how the game holds up on a small map, check out this extended footage I captured directly from the PS4. Just make sure to crank the quality setting to “1080p60″ on YouTube for the best results.

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