Xbox One X leads with higher resolutions for Call of Duty: WWII on console

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Call of Duty: WWII is quite possibly the biggest game of 2017 and many gamers have been waiting to hear more about how it runs on Xbox One X.

The console features 1.8 TFLOPS more power than the PlayStation 4 Pro so it's not surprising that many games look better. Digital Foundry got their hands on both versions and were able to determine that the Xbox One X stuck to a "full fat 4K" most of the time. Even though dynamic resolution is being used across both platforms along the horizontal axis, the Xbox One X version still sticks very closely to 4K. For those unfamiliar with the feature, dynamic resolution lowers the resolution to preserve the title's 60 FPS gameplay.

The PlayStation 4 Pro version is consistently lower resolution than the Xbox One X which results in a softer image. Not only that, but the Xbox One X also offers higher resolution shadows and superior ambient occlusion. This makes certain scenes appear more detailed than what you find on Sony's machine. This is great news for Xbox One X owners because they get to experience the best console version of the game.

Call of Duty returns to its roots with Call of Duty: WWII. According to Activision, the game is a breathtaking experience that redefines World War II for a new gaming generation. You step into the shoes of a young soldier who lands in Normandy on D-Day and must battle across Europe through iconic locations in history's most monumental war. Experience classic Call of Duty combat, the bonds of friendship, and the unforgiving nature of war in this game.

Keep an eye on WindowsCentral.com/Gaming for all the latest in Xbox and Windows 10 gaming, accessories, news, and reviews!

Asher Madan
Asher Madan

Asher Madan handles gaming news for Windows Central. Before joining Windows Central in 2017, Asher worked for a number of different gaming outlets. He has a background in medical science and is passionate about all forms of entertainment, cooking, and antiquing.
28 Comments
  • Oh boy! I need to play this.
  • It's getting to a point where I really cannot understand the purpose of the PS4 Pro. It's clearly underpowered for 4K gaming, so why did Sony make it so half-hearted? It's clearly just a 1080p60, 2K30 machine for most stuff.
  • You might want to watch the video.
    You'll then realise that the game actually runs exactly the same on both consoles with the One X only having slightly barely noticeable sharper textures. So the question is: what's the point of paying 100€ more for the One X when it delivers similar results and doesn't even allow you to swap the hard drive yourself for, say, an SSHD or even an SSD.
  • You can always use an external SSD. Additionally, to me and many others there's a noticeable difference. This is just one example, Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, The Evil Within 2 look much better. In some cases they have around 3 million more pixels on Xbox One X. This results in a much sharper image. For some that's a pretty big reason to get an Xbox One X. Plus, the Xbox One X supersamples all games to a 1080p display if that's what you're using, the PlayStation 4 Pro does this on a case-by-case basis.
  • Similar results?  PS4 Pro has no Super Ambient Occlusion, no High resolution Shadows and drops to 1200p. The One X version barely drops below 2000p and has much better textures, shadows and Occlusion lighting.  its a massive difference. Not a small one. The PS4 version looks like someone smeared Vaseline on the picture after playing on a One X.  what's funny is Sony paid for exclusive content. When the best place to play the game both in performance and visual fidelity is One X.  The real question you should be asking is next year when developers have has lots of extra development time with the One X just how bad is PS4 Pro going to look then. If with just 3-4 months Dev time developers can achieve this in COD already over the Pro then next year titles like Red Dead Redemption, Anthem etc are going be a huge gap. And that's nit including first party titles like Halo 6, Sea Of Thieves, Crackdown 3 that are going to absolutely destroy all visually on the One X.  basically the One X is like having a PS 4 strapped onto a PS4 Pro. That's the difference in power. A while PS4. But even then it has faster memory than both of them to. 
  • Face it dude, more is more. The 1X runs games better, even non-Microsoft "newer and more relevant" titles. BTW you can add an external SSD so you get to keep the 1TB that you already paid for.
  • "BTW you can add an external SSD so you get to keep the 1TB that you already paid for."   You can do the same on the PS4. Plus, you can update the internal drive to one as well which means you can have EVERYTHING - including the operating system - running from a faster drive. Yeah. More is more. And the PS4 "Pro" is more value for your money at the end of the day. Even if it, itself, is not worth the 399€ Sony asks for it (that's the price the Xads One X is worth).
  • The thing about worth is the definition is objective. Something is worth what people will pay. You can certainly have an opinion on it, but that doesn't make you right.
  • I bought a One X, but I can kind of see both sides. Plus, this is similar to what it's been for years but the other way around - The Xbox One always ran at lower resolutions than PS4 and as an Xbox One owner it never bothered me. Maybe the difference is bigger here than it was between the original Xbox One and original PS4 but I think owners of both systems will be happy and shouldn't really care - I never cared about the fact Battlefield ran at 900p or whatever on Xbox and 1080p on PS4 it didn't affect me. Like I say, maybe the gap is bigger here but as long as you are enjoying the console you paid for that's all that matters.
  • @Dan Harris Totally agree. I think most people do not care about this stuff. Playing at lower settings of otherwise shouldn't really matter for console gamers. And that's how it has always been. In gaming history, the weaker console with greater library has always been the more popular. Honestly I don't think most PS4 owners really care. For me, it looks like most people who care are certain people who owns the XB1x and want to justify their purchase or company "fans" who wants to promote the console.  
  • I think you answered your own question. Same reason the X runs at 60 fps and runs games with better texture and sampling at 1080p. Most people don't own 4k TVs yet.
  • A console on par with X wouldn't make sense in PlayStation. PS5 is confirmed. XB is going the way of smartphones with a single generation, and weaker devices will slowly stop being supported on case by case basis. The X will continue to be used even when XB1 is too weak for a particular game, so the insane power jump for the X will eventually stop getting held back by the vanilla XB1. The Pro on the other hand came with the promise that the 60 mil or so base PS4 owners will not be threatened by the Pro as the Pro will not have exclusives. Pro will not be used when a game is too weak for PS4 so there would be waste. The more power the Pro had, the more waste there would be. This is why the Pro CPU is just overclocked. Honestly I think the X made a mistake with such a weak CPU (only 0.2 GHz above Pro) because that limits how long the X can stay relevant. When games use more CPU the X won't last much longer than vanilla XB1, but of course there will still be indies and other games that still work even on vanilla XB1. There is also the fact that PS4 Pro needed to launch close to PSVR, and PSVR needed to launch as early as possible to get in early in the VR market. Pro launched just one month after PSVR to give an upgrade to the new wave of gamers eager to play VR. If PS waited a year for hardware to get a bit cheaper, many gamers would have already gotten over the VR hype, though the year wait wouldn't affect much anyway. I'm sure Sony also factored in the current state of the 4K market and their 2 to 1 lead over XB, so upon finding out about X they didn't need to revise. For now the Pro is an awesome upgrade over base PS4, and it may not be the strongest console (by a hefty 40%) but at the end of the day it's the strongest PlayStation console and in the current state of things this is much more important to more gamers.  
  • X CPU is 30% faster than PS4 Pro. It's not only about the clocks. This is the big mistake people are making about One X. they see the clock speeds and Terraflops and assume that's it. The whole system has been designed unlike any precious console. In ways even Sony commented on were extremely impressive.  Thing is why even make the PS4 Pro if they were going to kill it off in 2019/2020. So everyone who was going to spend £349 for a Pro this year is going to get 2 years out of it and then its obsolete??  What worries more the most with Sony going forward is if people buy digital games in there store today, will they run on PS5 in 3 years time? Or are they going to force me to pay for PSNOW to play games I already bought?  The other is their generation format. Are they really going to stay on 7 year generations? Because if they try and do mid gen upgrades by killing them off 2-3 years after they release them no one is going o buy them. I fear with a digital market becoming predominant going forward, Sony have the worst policy for consumers. 
  • We don't know if the Xbox One X will still be the most powerful Xbox console in 2019/2020 - I'd say almost certainly the next Xbox will be out in 2020. Seems to be the way they are going. And it's a good think - Like you mentioned Xbox is really looked to end console generations as we know them and keep the software forwards compatible across new consoles. I'm hopeful we'll never have to start our game collection from zero again on Xbox and that makes me really happy.
  • @Richard "X CPU is 30% faster than PS4 Pro" Do you have a link to that or are you making stuff up again?
  • "PS5 is confirmed" - yeah, probably in FOUR years IF Sony can stay solvent. 
  • You might want to check the results of the PlayStation division ;) Allow me to spare you the work: that division itself is so profitable that it's actually keeping afloat Sony's almost dead mobile division. If the PlayStation wasn't making billions, Sony would have put an end to Xperias already.
  • Dunno how it compares to PS4 Pro but... The CPU is actually the main bottleneck in the One X now. The improvements in framerate are smaller in CPU intensive scenes such as in Hitman on the Paris level. If there's anything they should have bumped higher it's the CPU - Still a beast of a machine though which I am extremely happy with. This will do me nicely for a few years until the Xbox One Y is released
  • The pro was made to show off vr rather than 4k where Microsoft went the other way and made a console to show off 4k. That sums up the pro and X imo.
  • The Pro and the X are both underpowered for 4K, the difference is that the X is a bit closer to native 4K, and none is made for 1080p 60fps since they don't have the power for it. Windows Central normally just tells the story half assed, for example the lower resolution wolfenstein 2 in both console are ~1380p and ~1620p in the Pro and X respectively, however here they don't say that because that doesn't make the X an impressive console, they say that the target resolution of the game is 1440p and 2160p for Pro and X, they just don't tell you that the X can't sustain that resolution in the majority of the time while the Pro maintains 1440p almost all the the time.
    They don't also tell you that the X version of titalfall is the version that has worse performance, they also don't tell you that the resolution in that games is lower than the Pro, and I'm not saying that in terms of performance Pro>X because that would be BS (in titanfall the problem is probably optimization). If you want to really see an article comparing games in Pro vs X just go to eurogamer.
  • you are absolutely wrong on Woldenstein. Go check out digital foundry's comparison. You are obviously a hater - stop spewing your foundationless opinions as fact.  
  • DF actually say X average frame rate is 2060p. Pro is 1380p. This after 4 month dev time on X. 
  • Titanfall2 was already patched. Looks and performs a lot better.
  • This is brilliant work. Only 4 months dev time and they achieved this. well done Activision. Great game. 
  • I started the first mission on my 1S, and then waited for my 1X to come in to really Play the game. I am so glad I waited. This game is absolutely gorgeous on the 1x, buttery smooth, and above all else - a GREAT game.  Just to see how the consoles stack up, blew the dust off my ps4 pro and launched it using the same setup. You can DEFINITELY tell a difference. Ps4 pro looked good - but no where near as beautiful as 1x. What these guys don't point out is that the SOUND is even better on the 1X, which doesn't make sense since the game isn't in atmos.
  • The devs of Xbox one X state they somehow improved sound. So fascinating
  • Why can't folk just decide what's important to them in a console & spend their money accordingly? We all have differing opinions. Buy what makes you happy & call it good. None of us have the right to criticize how the other spends their money! Buy the console you want & game until your heart's content.
  • You can swap the internal drive in Xbox too. Just install OS from my pendrive. But doing so will void your warranty. So better stick with external drives.