If you’ve been curiously (morbidly or otherwise) about how the Playstation-built Final Fantasy 14 has been doing in its two months on Xbox in regards to performance, Digital Foundry has you covered. Marc 'Try4ce' Duddleson joined Digital Foundry’s YouTube channel to follow up his 2021 video on FFXIV’s many editions, plus penned a written piece on Eurogamer, in order to give the details.
The results? Here and there. Of course, the more powerful Series X holds up steadily above 40fps, even hitting towards 60 at many points. Series S doesn’t do so well being the lower-end model, with more framerate loss, especially in busy areas possibly mandating use of 1080p and lower graphic settings.
However, on both platforms, Duddleson experienced dragged-out “black screens,” on the Series S more frequently than the Series X, likely referring to long reload times when the screen blacks out during a death or the like. He says he experienced pauses of up to 20 seconds or so during these resurrections and area transitions, while other players seemed to get along fine.
Duddleson also touches on the infamously overzealous censorship of the in-game chat, which seemed to be some sort of mandate for the game to be on the platform at all. It’s so intensive that it even hits some NPCs’ dialogue, making for some goofy interactions. This is consistent with reports that some players were banned for advertising Free Companies (the game’s version of guilds), likely due to catching the platform’s filters.
The full review on YouTube includes a great little introduction for the engines leading up to this point, and both editions get delightfully specific about how the Xboxes’ tech holds up. Hopefully, the Xbox can keep things running when the new graphics update drops in late June with Dawntrail’s early access release.
