14 DAY TRIAL // Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition was initially announced to run at 900p resolution on the Xbox One, whereas the PlayStation 4 would reach full 1080p, which Microsoft called "unacceptable."
According to Blizzard' Production Director John Hight, this led to the development team working directly with Microsoft in order to achieve 1080p on the Xbox One computer entertainment system as well.
"We did have 1080p, but we were finding it challenging to keep our frame-rate. Because Diablo's so much of an action game, we wanted to have a responsive feel - especially with four players. When you get four witch doctors in a room full of demons, that's probably the worst case scenario for us because we have effects going off everywhere.
We want to make sure that it still feels very glassy, very responsive, and that's why we dropped resolution down on it," Hight explained.
The effort to reach 1080p was not an easy one, as a 44 percent bump in resolution without a severe impact on gameplay is not easy to achieve.
"We did find it challenging early on to get it to 1080p. That's why we made the decision to drop to 900. That's what we demoed and were showing around E3 time. And Microsoft was just like, 'This is unacceptable. You need to figure out a way to get a better resolution.' So we worked with them directly, they gave us a code update to let us get to full 1080p," Hight told Digital Foundry.
Blizzard released a day-one update to bump the resolution of Diablo 3 to 1080p on Microsoft's next-gen console, which, according to Digital Foundry's analysis, results in an identical image quality to that of the PlayStation 4 version.
However, the report also notes that the resolution boost resulted in some issues with the frame rate, with the Xbox One edition of the game said to drop from the locked 60 frames per second to "the low 50s," occasionally, following the patch.
Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition is out now for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One platforms.
The edition delivers the Reaper of Souls expansion to consoles, as well as all patches and content up to 2.1.0, while also bringing Blizzard Entertainment's action role-playing game to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 for the very first time.
In case you're wondering whether you'll be able to perceive the framerate dip in more busy scenarios on the Xbox One, you can check out Digital Foundry's post-patch framerate test video below.
