Gears 5 Xbox Series X enhancements include ray-traced global illumination and possible 120 FPS mode

By Samuel Tolbert
last updated

The Coalition's latest big game will get major upgrades on Microsoft's next console.

Gears 5 Xbox Series X Cutscenes 60fps
Gears 5 Xbox Series X Cutscenes 60fps (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

What you need to know

  • Xbox released several new tidbits of information for Xbox Series X today.
  • Part of this rollout was details on how Gears 5 will benefit from Xbox Series X.
  • Gears 5 on Xbox Series X will get Ultra level settings, with features like raytracing global illumination.
  • Gears 5 will be upgraded for free through Smart Delivery.

As part of the big drop of Xbox Series X information today, Xbox and The Coalition revealed new information on exactly how Gears 5 will benefit from the new hardware. For starters, Gears 5 on Xbox Series X uses the full slate of PC Ultra settings, which had to be pared back on Xbox One X. This means things like better textures, better fog and increased particle counts.

The campaign cutscenes, which run at 30 frames per second (FPS) on Xbox One X, now run at 60FPS on Xbox Series X. Load times are also heavily decreased and The Coalition told Digital Foundry that the game will feature ray-traced screen space global illumination. You can click the images below for an early technical comparison.

Gears 5 Xbox One X (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

Gears 5 Xbox Series X (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

Source: Xbox Game Studios

The improvements don't stop there, as The Coalition also mentioned on Xbox Wire (opens in new tab) that Gears 5 runs at over 100FPS on Xbox Series X and the team is actively looking at 120FPS for the multiplayer modes. Gears 5 supports Smart Delivery, so these upgrades will all be free for Xbox Series X owners.

Xbox Series X is scheduled to release in Holiday 2020.

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Samuel Tolbert
Samuel Tolbert

Samuel Tolbert is a freelance writer covering gaming news, previews, reviews, interviews and different aspects of the gaming industry, specifically focusing on Xbox and PC gaming on Windows Central. You can find him on Twitter @SamuelTolbert.

3 Comments
  • Still torn as to whether MS is doing the right thing... As much as I like these drops, it does leave less to blow us away with in the future. That said, nothing is really that new, it's more flesh in the bones, as many of these specs were already revealed.
  • Last Gen we knew all about the hardware before this time in the year in 2013 for both PS4 and Xbox One. This is absolutely normal. It's not normal from a PS5 perspective to have 0 information by thr middle of March on supposedly the launch in 8 months time.
  • I am so happy with the power of Series X. For it to be running gears with higher settings than the highest settings available on PC in just 2 weeks is beyond crazy. It's in an unoptimzed state and matches the performance of a RTX 2080 without using any new GPU features of hardware gains that Series X has. Just wait until we see out durst truly optimized Series X game. It's gonna blow us away. Playground Games, I really hope we see your new RPG on Series X at the Xbox digital Conference around June.