Following the full launch of FromSoftware's ambitious new co-op roguelike offshoot Elden Ring Nightreign last week, Digital Foundry — a team of widely respected tech analysts for video games and gaming hardware that routinely reviews new games — has now completed its analysis of the spinoff's performance on its console platforms, including Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5 Pro, PS5, and PS4. You can read the article on Eurogamer or watch the video version on its YouTube channel (also embedded below).
While there's plenty of positive things to say about Nightreign's gameplay (read my review for my thoughts on it), Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan notes that from a technical perspective, the new game is overall quite disappointing and is afflicted with several of the same issues that impact the mainline Elden Ring experience from 2022. It's also worth noting that Nightreign doesn't have the option for ray-traced shadows and ambient occlusion that eventually came to the original title.
As Morgan explains in the analysis, both the Xbox Series X and PS5 fail to ever reach 60 FPS in Elden Ring Nightreign's quality mode with fixed 4K visuals, with both systems only managing a range of 35-50 FPS with severe drops into the 20s at the start of runs when you're dropping into Limveld. The PS5 Pro fares better with a 40-60 FPS gamut, while the lower-end Xbox Series S gets 30-40 FPS in its 1440p quality mode.
Therefore, it's recommended to use the performance mode that can scale the resolution from 4K down to 1440p on Xbox Series X, PS5 Pro, and PS5, and from 1440p to 1080p on Xbox Series S to maximize framerate. Still, a consistent 60 FPS is missing here too, with Xbox Series X and PS5 performance ranging from 40 to 60 FPS, PS5 Pro managing 50-60 FPS, and Series S getting 40-60 FPS like its more powerful counterparts.
Since Xbox systems have a larger 40-60Hz window for variable refresh rate (VRR; this syncs your display refresh rate to your FPS, reducing screen tearing) to kick in than PlayStation ones do (48-60Hz), Digital Foundry says "it's a much smoother, less visibly juddering experience as a result" on Microsoft's systems. However, none of these results across all the consoles are good.
Oh, and in case you're wondering about last-gen consoles, the PS4 reportedly only achieves a meager 20-30 FPS — and that's with the game running at 900p with considerably lower shadow quality and grass density compared to current-gen. If you're going to play Nightreign, you'd best do so on a newer console.
Another thing to note is that while Xbox has a small edge in terms of framerate, PS5 Pro users will enjoy slightly better image quality in performance mode, as the more advanced system doesn't tend to scale its resolution down as far as the Xbox Series X or PS5 does. With that said, Elden Ring Nightreign doesn't have any Pro-specific enhancements or optimizations whatsoever, which will likely irk Pro users.
The review doesn't go over the experience on PC, but having now put over 60 hours into it on Steam myself, I can say that it's run well — though I am playing on a high-end RTX 4070 Ti SUPER rig. For me, I had no issue maintaining 60 FPS on the Maximum settings preset, and only encountered a few small stutters during my review period. After the full launch, though, there have been some noticeable small framerate dips. Notably, some folks using 40 and 50-series RTX GPUs have run into major FPS issues that FromSoftware is investigating; as tends to be the case with PC gaming, your mileage may vary.
All in all, it's unfortunate that Elden Ring Nightreign has many of the same performance problems on consoles that its parent game does, and I hope the developers improve both titles with future updates. As always, though, I'm glad that the gaming community has Digital Foundry experts to conduct thorough tests like this one. Give its Patreon a look and support the group if you feel so inclined.
Elden Ring Nightreign is a bold new experimental spinoff from FromSoftware that spices up the original game's Soulsborne combat with a roguelike, co-op driven twist. Though it has sizable issues like only having one map or underwhelming enemy variety, it's nevertheless going to be one of this year's best Xbox games and best PC games for Souls fans craving action. It's $39.99, but you can get it for $33.99 at Newegg with the promo code XVSAVE (PC) or EPET226 (Xbox).
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