Warhammer 40K: Darktide Disappoints on Xbox Series X with Low Native Resolution, FPS Drops

Last week, Warhammer 40K: Darktide, the latest co-op action game from Warhammer: Vermintide developer Fatshark, finally arrived on Xbox Series X/S. While the game was originally supposed to arrive on Xbox “shortly” after the PC release, it ended up taking nearly a year, so how has the console version shaped up with that extra development time? Well… the folks at Digital Foundry took the Xbox Series X/S version for a spin, and the results weren’t that hot. You can check out the full DF video below if you have around 15 minutes to spare, or you can scroll down for our recap of the salient points.

On Xbox Series X Warhammer 40K: Darktide offers a 60fps Performance mode and a 30fps Quality mode with visuals being roughly the equivalent of PC on Max settings, albeit with no ray traced reflections or global illumination. The Performance mode runs at quite a low native resolution, around 864p upscaled to 1440p, and Digital Foundry found a lot of jagged edges due to poor anti-aliasing. Meanwhile, the Quality mode is around 1368p upscaled to 4k. On the Xbox Series S, you’re only getting a single mode, which is around 720p upscaled to 1080p.

In terms of framerate, the Xbox Series X Performance mode can fall to around the 50fps range, even the high 40s, with the occasional pretty harsh stuttering. XSX Quality mode also can’t quite nail its 30fps mark with dips into the mid-20s. Meanwhile, the Xbox Series S performs about as well as XSX in Quality mode. The game also has what might feel like framerate judders (but actually aren’t) due to network connectivity not quite being what it should.

Warhammer 40K: Darktide is an ambitious game that had its share of problems on PC at launch and it seems like its arrival on Xbox Series X/S is playable enough, but not exactly ideal. Whether the Xbox version improves with future updates, remains to be seen. You can get more details on the most recent Darktide update that brought the game to Xbox, right here.

Warhammer 40K: Darktide can be played on PC and Xbox Series X/S.

Written by Nathan Birch