Assassin's Creed IV may be a next-gen game, but it runs at a "lowly" 900p upscaled to 1080p instead of at a native 1080p, Ubisoft has revealed today. The publisher happily notes however that it plans to update the game in the near future to offer full native 1080p visuals.
Ubisoft communications manager Gary Steinman elaborated on the update, stating that players will need to download a title update that will be available shortly after the game's release.
“Even without the title update, the game is undeniably stunning on next-gen consoles. Indeed, as Associate Producer Sylvain Trottier suggests, some players might not even be able to tell the difference. That’s because the game, as shipped, is being rendered on next-gen at a resolution that’s very close to 1080p (900p, if you’re curious), and the upscaling process barely adjusts the image.”
“If it's running at 720p vs 1080p you're going to notice the difference by far,” Trottier explains. “But if it's set at a resolution that's very close, where most of the pixels are already there in internal processing, most people won't see any difference.”
Steinman says that the retial version shipped at 900p so the developers could optimize the game to run at a fluid 30fps, never dipping below the figure.
“The team then used the time between the ship date and the release to focus on a title update that could deliver native 1080p resolution on the PS4.”
In addition to the 1080p upgrade, the update will also come with a new anti-aliasing technique to offer the game improved visuals.
It's unknown at what resolution the game runs on the Xbox One.