Microsoft and Sony have been going head-to-head with their next-generation consoles, the Xbox One and the PS4, in recent months. So far, the PS4 is the front runner, after Sony announced that it has sold 10 million consoles, while Microsoft has been much quieter with its sales figures; at its last earnings call it did not separate out Xbox 360 and One sales, all we know is 1 million consoles were sold.
When Microsoft found out that Diablo 3 was going to run at 1080p on the PS4 and at 900p on the Xbox One, they were not happy. For one thing, the resolution increase on the PS4 will be attractive to hardcore gamers who prefer 1080p and 60 FPS, so if the Xbox One cannot provide this experience, which platform to choose becomes an easy choice. Knowing this, Microsoft went directly to Blizzard and got them to up the resolution for the game.
Eurogamer was able to meet up with the crew of Blizzard recently and asked them how they were able to upgrade the graphics from 900p to 1080p with a patch.
"We did find it challenging early on to get it to 1080p. That's why we made the decision to drop to 900. That's what we demoed and were showing around E3 time. And Microsoft was just like, 'This is unacceptable. You need to figure out a way to get a better resolution.' So we worked with them directly, they gave us a code update to let us get to full 1080p."
Microsoft knows that it has to make sure that every game that comes out that is cross-platform has to be equal on both systems if it wants to compete with the PS4. Especially with games coming like the highly anticipated Call of Duty: Advanced Warfighter, you can bet that Microsoft will make the same demands for that game as they did for Diablo 3 so that gamers will not opt for the PS4 for the better gameplay graphics.
Other ways that Microsoft is hoping to attract gamers to the Xbox One is with their new bundles that they announced at Gamescom, some of them include a 1TB hard drive or come in white too.
Source: Eurogamer
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