How embarrassing if the Microsoft-owned studio couldn’t optimize the game for Microsoft’s console during the one-year exclusivity period to perform better on the console than on PlayStation 5…

But that’s the case, incredible as it may seem. And it’s coming from a very credible source: in a new episode of Digital Foundry’s weekly podcast, Ghostwire: Tokyo performs worse on Xbox Series X than PlayStation 5 in virtually every way (while the game was released on Sony’s console after Microsofft’s deal to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda, the game’s publisher, was closed!)

According to Digital Foundry, the Xbox Series X’s performance is about 5-10% behind the PlayStation 5, but it could be more in some places. The VSync mode is tailored for higher frame rates, and on PlayStation 5, it’ll give you 90-100 FPS, while on Xbox Series X, it can drop to around 80. Regarding resolution, the two platforms are mostly the same, but in Quality mode, the Xbox Series X is slightly behind the PlayStation 5. The implementation of ray tracing on Microsoft’s console is not well done: reflections are lower resolution, and shadows are not correctly aligned. The situation is no better on the Xbox Series S, which has no ray tracing, and, on Performance mode, it offers a frame rate below 60 FPS.

How did Tango Gameworks pull it off? You can’t say they don’t know the Xbox Series hardware. Earlier this year, they released Hi-Fi Rush for PC and Xbox Series as a surprise, which was stunning on Microsoft’s console duo, even from a technical point of view. We could even go into conspiracy theories here: could it be that Microsoft deliberately screwed up the Xbox port of Ghostwire: Tokyo (while it also got the Spider’s Thread update, which inexplicably gave the game Denuvo on PC…?!) to lower themselves to help them acquire Activision Blizzard King?

What a bizarre situation.

Source: WCCFTech