'COD: Ghosts' Xbox One Resolution: Infinity Ward Discusses ‘Nightmare’ Developing For Two Next-Gen Consoles

The “Call of Duty: Ghosts” resolution differences between Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 were confirmed in a tweet from Mark Rubin, Infinity Ward executive producer. “COD: Ghosts” will run at 1080p on the PS4 and 720p on the Xbox One. Rubin sat down with Eurogamer to discuss “Resolutiongate” and described the development process for the next-gen consoles.

The difference in resolution has sparked much debate as “COD: Ghosts” and “Battlefield 4” both sport differing resolutions for the new consoles; the latter runs at 900p on the PS4 and 720p on the Xbox One. This resolution difference has led many to discuss the perceived advantages one console may have over the other and the possibility that the Xbox One is more difficult to develop for than the PS4.

According to Eurogamer, the difference in resolution may be due to Microsoft’s console reserving 10 percent of the system’s GPU time for various functions and features. For Rubin, the initial transition to the PS4 and the Xbox One was made easier as both consoles adopted PC-like architectures, but the biggest hurdle was each device’s operating system.

The OS is usually added later, and this requires developers to try to allocate necessary resources, but that could all change based on memory management. Rubin said to Eurogamer, “We don't have the SDKs (software development kits) for those features yet, and then they come in and you go, okay, well it needs 3MB of RAM - oh, crap, we only allocated two! You can't just take a MB from anywhere.”

Finding a balance and understanding the memory management for each system is one reason “COD: Ghosts” is running 720p on the Xbox One and 1080p on the PS4. Rubin does not give a specific reason or main difference between the two consoles to explain the disparity, but did say the frame rate would have suffered. In the Eurogamer interview, Rubin wanted to make the best game possible and in order to get “COD: Ghosts” to run 1080p on the Xbox One it would have meant abandoning the targeted 60 frames per second.

Rubin says developing for a new system takes time and Microsoft may free up more memory for developers in the future, notes Eurogamer. “COD: Ghosts” will be released on Tuesday, and even “Resolutiongate” will not slow down the anticipation for the game.

As reported by Agence France-Presse, “Call of Duty: Black Ops II” reached the $1 billion sales mark in the first month, and “COD: Ghosts” is likely to exceed those sales numbers. The game will be released on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U and PC and will be a launch title for the Xbox One and the PS4.