14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's Xbox boss, Phil Spencer, has made it clear on Twitter that his group didn't force Blizzard to make Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition run at a 1080p resolution on the Xbox One, emphasizing that a game's performance is completely up to the developer.
Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition appeared earlier this week across the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One platforms. The role-playing dungeon crawler finally made its debut on the new consoles from Microsoft and Sony, while bringing the Reaper of Souls expansion content to the older devices.
Earlier this year, Blizzard caused quite a stir when it confirmed that Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition would run at a native 1080p resolution on the PS4 while reaching only 900p on the Xbox One. The studio emphasized that the lower resolution on the Microsoft device was due to the focus on the 60fps framerate.
However, at launch, the studio released a day-one patch that raised the resolution of Diablo 3 on Xbox One to a native 1080p.
Blizzard made it clear earlier this week that this was due to a strong collaboration with Microsoft, which didn't approve of the 900p resolution.
Now, in order to avoid any perceived actions from his own company, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has made it clear on Twitter that Blizzard wasn't forced to increase the resolution of Diablo 3 on the Xbox One. Instead, Microsoft offered its help to ensure that the studio could take advantage of the June performance increase that appeared on the Xbox One.
"We didn’t force any game to ship at 1080p. We work with devs to make the game they want to make on Xbox One. Diablo III was coming through during GPU increases in June, was good partnership to create a great Diablo on Xbox One. I just thought we could get to 1080p. If Blizzard thought it wasn’t right for Diablo they had the call on what shipped."
Spencer also agrees that studios should have complete freedom on how their games handle on a platform, even those owned directly by Microsoft.
"I agree with you, let the studios make the call on what they want to ship," he tells a fan. "They know their games better than I do. Studios decide, even our first party studios, I won’t dictate a framerate and/or resolution on a game."
Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition now runs the same on the PS4 and Xbox One.
@XboxLiveGamer88 We didn't force any game to ship at 1080p. We work with devs to make the game they want to make on XB1.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) August 20, 2014
