Metal Gear Solid 5 Resolution And FPS Revealed For PS4 And Xbox One

Konami revealed the official resolution and FPS specs for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on all four major home consoles and PC. It should go without saying that PC comes out on top with the ability to render the game at a max resolution of 4K (though I'm sure enterprising modders will find a way to scale it up to 8K), but the differences between the consoles might surprise you.

Gamespot spotted the news from Konami's official website where they have a brief image of the resolution and frame-rate specs in plain old English where you can see exactly how each console breaks down in the comparison. Check out the image below.

This is actually a bump up from the previous resolution for Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes on the Xbox One, which was relegated to 720p at 60fps. That year's outing of PES was also limited to 720p at 60fps on the Xbox One.

Many simply believed that the Fox Engine, Kojima Production's proprietary and very high-scaling game engine, was just too much for Microsoft's console. However, here we see that the Xbox One has graduated from the seventh-gen resolution category of 1280 x 720 (though likely it would have been 1400 x 720 on the Xbox One) to 1600 x 900. There's about a 500,000 pixel per frame difference between Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes on the Xbox One and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on the Xbox One.

That alone tells a very interesting story of how even with a lot of software optimization they still can't optimize fixed hardware. I imagine most gamers will at least be pleased that the gap between the PS4 version of the game, which runs at 1080p and 60fps and the Xbox One version at 900p and 60fps is closer than the previous 1080p and 720p gap. In fact, Konami released some screenshot comparisons so you can literally see the difference between 1080p and 720p (without anti-aliasing) and it's a world of difference.

The shots below are of the PS4 and PS3 versions of the game. The old-gen consoles are running The Phantom Pain at only 720p at 30fps, which is abysmal if I'm being honest. You can see the very clear differences below, courtesy of Gematsu.

On the left is the PS4 and on the right is the PS3.

Now, not only are you looking at a difference in game resolution and graphics aliasing, but you're also seeing a difference in texture resolution. You can see how Snake's face has more life and depth to it in the PS4 version, along with more sub-surface scattering to give the game a more robust and lively look for the characters in close-ups.

The differences are also not negligible when you see how lighting and poly-count changes between the seventh generation and eighth generation home consoles. Take a look below.

Dynamic real-time lights are in play on the left side with the PS4, where you can see the reflective shine from the sun on Snake's bionic arm. You can also see how the poly-count on the left side screenshot is a lot higher than on the right side, where the details are condensed into almost a blurry mess.

Surprisingly there's still soft-shadows cast in the PS3 version of the game, which is impressive for a system so old to be able to display that kind of effect. Of course, it's offset with the same kind of jaggy 720p resolution as the first screenshot, taking away a lot of fidelity from the in-game assets.

While a lot of people can say that graphics don't matter, in this case the graphics help tell a story and the story is obviously better told when the proper expressions, texture details and special effects can be properly utilized so that the artist's vision can come to life.

With less than a month to go for the release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, it's quite obvious which versions stand head and shoulders above the rest, and now it's just a matter of gamers picking and choosing which platform they want to play the game on.