In February, five games supported FPS Boost. Not February of last year mind you. February as in less than three months ago. Since then, Microsoft has been relentlessly adding the feature to games, adding five Bethesda titles in March and 13 EA titles in April.

Apparently, Microsoft decided they weren’t moving quickly enough, because they announced that 74 games had been updated with the feature today, bringing the total number of games that support the feature up to 97. Larry Hyrb, Xbox’s Major Nelson, announced the news on Twitter. Many of the updated games are available via Xbox Games Pass and EA Play.

The entire list is too lengthy to include here. Highlights include Assassin’s Creed Unity, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Far Cry 5, Wasteland 3, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, and several of the LEGO games.

Other notable titles with the feature include:

• Alien Isolation
• Gears of War 4
• Halo Wars 2
• Hyperscape
• Life is Strange 1 & 2
• Metro 2033 Redux
• Overcooked! 2
• ReCore
• Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition
• Superhot
• Untitled Goose Game
• Yakuza 6: The Song of Life

It’s an incredibly impressive achievement, and several of the games listed are some of the best Xbox has to offer. The fact that almost all of them are available via Game Pass and EA play are just icing on the cake. You can see the full list of FPS Boost enabled games here.

https://twitter.com/majornelson/status/1389248724686098432

Well, I knew more games getting FPS Boosts was gonna happen soon, but I didn’t think it was gonna happen that soon. Microsoft confirmed today that 13 EA games have been updated to include the FPS Boost feature available on Xbox Series S/X.

Microsoft has spent a lot of time enhancing old backwards compatible games recently, offering enhanced resolutions and boosted performance. The new hotness is FPS Boost, which natively doubles and in some cases quadruples the frame rates of the original games. There haven’t been any additions to the FPS Boost initiative was March… until today.

The thirteen EA titles that benefit from the update are:

• Battlefield 1
• Battlefield 4
• Battlefield 5
• Mirror’s Edge Catalyst
• Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare
• Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville
• Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2
• Sea of Solitude
• Star Wars Battlefront
• Star Wars Battlefront II
• Titanfall
• Titanfall 2
• Unravel 2

Every title now supports 120 FPS on Xbox Series X, except for Sea of Solitude, which is capped at 60 FPS on both Xbox Series S and Series S. Battlefield 4, Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare, Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2, Star Wars: Battlefront, Titanfall 2, and Unravel 2 support 120 FPS on Xbox Series X.

Users can enable FPS boost by going into the “Manage Game” section for any title. From there, they select “Compatibility Options,” which allows players to toggle FPS Boost and Auto HDR (which adds HDR to games that didn’t ship with it). The updates will be applied after restarting the game. Players can check to see if these settings are enabled by pressing the Xbox button while in game.

In an age where game preservation and backwards compatibility are major concerns, it’s good to see Microsoft continue to do the work to support both.

One of the coolest things about Microsoft’s focus on backwards compatibility is that older backwards compatible games often run better than they did on their original hardware through things like enhanced resolutions and better performance.

The big new thing is FPS Boost, which natively doubles and in some cases quadruples the frame rates of the original games. There haven’t been any additions to the FPS Boost initiative since March, when Dishonored: Definitive Edition, Fallout 4, Prey, Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Special Edition all received the update, but it looks like the next batch is coming soon.

The news comes courtesy of Jason Ronald, the Xbox director of program management, who, when asked on Twitter when the next set of titles to get the treatment, responded with a single word- “soon.”

Given that the last set of titles to receive the update got it less than a week after it was confirmed to be coming, I’m guessing “soon” means “really soon.” FPS Boost isn’t suitable for every game because of the way some games tie their framerate into their internal logic (we’re looking at you, Dark Souls 2), but it’s a great system that allows Microsoft to make some games better without needing help from the original developers.

We may not know what games are in line for the treatment next, but I personally can’t wait to find out.

Soon

— Jason Ronald (@jronald) April 19, 2021