Here’s something strange: Buses, a previously Xbox-exclusive narrative game from Obsidian, currently runs better on PlayStation 5 than Xbox Series X/S. It’s apparently a bug that is being fixed, but the whole situation has caused a firestorm in the never-ending console war.
For most of February, rumors circulated in the Xbox community and online that Microsoft was planning to port major games to PS5 and Switch. This led to a total collapse and finally-on February 15th– a podcast from Xbox confirming this, yes, Some games have been ported to other platforms. But it was also disputed that big titles were liked Starfield would release on PS5 and confirmed that the company had plans for more Xbox consoles in the future. On February 21st during a Nintendo Direct, Buses was announced as one of the first games released by Xbox for Switch and PS5. It started the next day. And strangely, at least on the PS5, the game runs at a higher frame rate than on the Microsoft console.
Buses on PS5 runs at 120 FPS. It currently runs at half that on the Xbox Series X/S, i.e. just 60 FPS. To be clear, this is not a game that needs to run at more than 200 FPS or anything like that. It is a narrative, text-heavy 2D game. Still, many already out-of-shape Xbox fans aren’t particularly interested in the game running better on the PS5.
According to Obsidian Studio Design Director Josh Sawyer, the reason for this discrepancy is a bug. On February 26th, he tweeted: “120fps will be enabled in the next patch for XBOX. The deactivation is just a mistake.”
However, that didn’t help much, as some Xbox fans questioned why the game – which released in November 2022 – never received this patch enabling 120 FPS earlier. It’s a bit strange that Microsoft didn’t ensure that the Xbox port of the game would run at 120 FPS before releasing the PS5 version.
My city has contacted Xbox regarding the situation.
While this was just a strange little quirk related to a bug in a nearly two-year-old game, it certainly won’t do anything to ease fears among players most loyal Xbox customers that Microsoft is not focusing enough on the platform they love.
