If you’ve been annoyed with developers seemingly limiting the extent of their visuals in order to achieve parity across the Xbox One and PS4, then there’s good news. Tom Clancy’s The Division will be properly optimized for each platform it releases on, avoiding a “least common denominator” approach according to Massive Entertainment’s Martin Hulberg.
Speaking to Open World Games (via GameSpot), Hulberg stated that, “Downgrading is a weird term to use. Obviously, we want to make a game that looks the best it can on its respective format, so Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC,” he said in an interview with Open World Games transcribed by Gamespot.
“So I think the term downgrade is a bit confusing and weird because we’re trying to get the most out of every machine we use. So Xbox gets its attention, PlayStation gets its attention, and PC of course will be able to cram it up a bit more depending on the hardware you have.”
This means that frame rate and resolution of each respective version will be decided on the basis of the platform itself. There won’t be a blanket standard for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. “We address every console, every platform as its own version, so we try to stay away from the thing where you go for the least common denominator and everybody suffers for it. We want to make a good experience on all respective formats.”
Tom Clancy’s The Division is currently slated to release next year with a beta rumoured to be arriving first on Xbox One in March 2015.