Halo Infinite At 30fps on Xbox One Is Not A Downgrade, Despite Previous Promises

Halo Infinite just had its first technical preview for its multiplayer mode over the last weekend, and its performance on the last-gen Xbox consoles revealed some interesting details. The game, at least its multiplayer component at this stage, targets a frame rate of 30fps on Xbox One, Xbox One S and Xbox One X, at different resolutions of course. This is a far cry from the original vision of 60fps gameplay on those consoles that was promised by Xbox head Phil Spencer during last year’s disastrous Xbox games showcase. However, while that may result in a worse gameplay experience for players on the now 8-year old platform, it’s actually good news for the game itself. Let me explain.

Before we get started, it’s worth noting that Halo Infinite, at least during the current technical preview, runs at 60fps one Xbox Series X|S with an optional 120fps mode in multiplayer, and has an unlocked frame rate on PC. The game targets 4K resolution on the Xbox One X and 1080p on Xbox One S at 30 fps.

When Halo Infinite was originally revealed last year, developer 343 Industries announced that it was targeting a smooth 60fps experience on all platforms, including the Xbox One. This meant that 343 could only improve the visuals so much within the 16.6 millisecond window, and cutting down on crucial CPU-intensive features like AI. This posed a big challenge, as the CPU in the Xbox One consoles (as well as PS4) was notoriously underpowered, even when the consoles were released. Halo 5 was the first game in the franchise to target 60fps on consoles, but its design aspirations, being a more linear game, meant that developers could fine-tune its visuals as much as it wanted to perfection. This was a change of pace from previous Halo games, all of which ran at 30fps on consoles, which wasn’t a bad thing by itself.

The same can’t be said for Halo Infinite, or at least its campaign. It seems to take a more open-world like approach to its level design, as well as use dynamic lighting effects. It’s a much more ambitious title, where targeting 60fps on the last-gen machines would hamper its visuals and ambitions on the next-gen. And if there’s one thing that the game caught a lot of flak for the last time it was shown, it was that it didn’t look like the big system-seller Microsoft wanted it to look like.

Games performance analyst NX Gamer laid down his thoughts on what 343 Industries needed to do to improve the game’s visuals last year, and it looks like the developer has listened to the feedback.

As much as Phil Spencer may want you to believe that games can scale really well across generations, they really can’t across all departments when they’re designed for underpowered, almost a decade-old hardware. Of course, once the frame rate target was changed, that meant re-doing a lot of artistic work, which of course contributed to the year-long delay that the game faced.

343 Industries have also revealed that Halo Infinite will be the last mainline Halo entry, and will act as a unified platform with story expansions coming in the future. Let’s assume that it stays true for this entire generation, which should, by an educated guess, last around 8 years. As developers learn to take advantage of the new consoles over the years, the standard of in-game visuals, and game mechanics, will change. Halo Infinite targeting 30fps on the last-gen consoles, as much as it may feel like a participation trophy, is the right decision for the longevity of the game across all departments like art, AI, and its underlying game systems.

Veteran tech journalist Kostas Farkonas also chimed in that Spencer’s claims of scalability of games across generations, particularly this time around with the hardware gap being so huge, wasn’t entirely accurate. In a blog post published last year after Halo Infinite’s first gameplay reveal, he went into great details about why graphics can scale across hardware, but underlying systems that are more dependent on other factors such as CPU or memory, can not.

Halo Infinite’s performance on Xbox One consoles, while a little uneven during the technical preview, is still a good sign that 343 is serious about the game having a longer life span. Digital Foundry, in its latest DF Direct video, also expressed joy at the game’s technical and artistic changes.

“[T]here is perhaps a case that a diminished base Xbox One version is a good thing – it may suggest that 343 Industries are pushing the more capable Xbox hardware further, less encumbered by the need to accommodate the lowest end console,” notes DF head Richard Leadbetter in his analysis of the game’s early performance.

As someone who was extremely concerned about Halo Infinite’s scalability and legacy being hampered by old hardware, I’m happy with how the game is shaping up to be. Of course, players on Xbox One hardware may not have the objectively better gameplay experience, but maybe it’s time that Halo’s ambitions for the Xbox Series X|S stay true to the system seller Microsoft wants it to be.

Halo Infinite is slated to release in late 2021 for PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles, and will also be released on Xbox Game Pass at the same time.

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