[Update: The Xbox One appears to suffer from the same problem]
That 1080p came a costs, I guess. Multiple reviews point to a reoccurring problem with the PlayStation 4 rendition of Call of Duty: Ghosts: frame rate issues. Now before those who have been Xboned start jumping up and down, take note that the Xbox One version and all its good and bad technical flaws is still under embargo until November 12th.
Anyway, Gearnuke did all the work for us and compiled the quotes from major websites reviewing the game for the PlayStation 4. Consistently and unequivocally, each and every site all cite the same issue when it comes to certain moments in the game: The PS4 hits some major frame rate drop.
The article points to IGN, Giant Bomb, Edge and Joystiq all encountering the same problem to varying degrees of discomfort.
Reviews from sites like USA Today and the Financial Post don't necessarily get into the technical specs of the game. Although, to the credit of the Post, they do point out that there is a massive difference in the general leap from the PS3 to the PS4, although they skip over any mention of the PS4's icky habit of allegedly dropping frames.
Not to point fingers, but when you have non-gaming websites focused on business or cultural news not wholly related to the tech powering video games, it's hard to expect them to point out technical flaws for people who pore over reviews for such details.
Now, regarding the Game Front review, I did think it was pretty weird that throughout the very detailed and thorough examination of Ghosts across current and next-gen consoles, there was no mention of the PS4 suffering from dropped frames or FPS inconsistency. Maybe they just weren't looking for those details?
Still, it's good that some sites are pointing out that there are optimization flaws with Ghosts running on the PS4 and that despite running native 1080p, the game stutters at times under various graphical loads.
As mentioned, though, don't count this as a victory in the camp of the Xboned. Dancing around the fire like Kevin Costner in Dancing With Wolves is a bad idea given that it's likely the Xbox One could run into similar frame rate issues given the trouble it caused Infinity Ward on the development front. It wasn't necessarily the hardware, but according to an interview with Eurogamer, the Xbox One's heavily modified OS from anti-consumer DRM machine to a semi-consumer Windows 8 knockoff has caused the team more than enough headaches, with Infinity Ward executive producer Mark Rubin noting...
Working with the theoretical hardware would have been a disaster if... honestly, the hardest thing to deal with is not the architecture. It's the OS (operating system) of the systems. That's the thing that comes on the latest. The Xbox One's OS on their box versus the Sony OS, becomes the hardest. All the SDKs and stuff you have to work with - that's the stuff that changes, not the hardware itself.
What happened with the frame drops and inconsistent hold of 60fps on the PS4 version of the game? No idea. But if Infinity Ward was spending more time trying to optimize other versions of Ghosts to get it out of the door on time, it could explain why a simple thing like optimizing certain graphics-heavy scenarios didn't take place properly on the PS4. We all know darn well the game wasn't optimized for Jack Spit on the PC.
Now we just have to wait for November 12th to see how Call of Duty: Ghosts handles on the Xbox 720p, and whether Infinity Ward's seminal title on the new gen consoles will show any kind of parity beyond the resolution discrepancy.
