Microsoft today announced a lovely Xbox Series X/s upgrade for a large chunk of Bethesda's games catalogue, including The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76.
"Hot on the heels of officially welcoming Bethesda’s world-renowned studios to the Xbox family, we’re excited to announce that five of the biggest titles from their vast catalog of games – Dishonored: Definitive Edition, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Prey – will all be updated today to enable FPS Boost on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S", Microsoft wrote.
Note that the upgrade applies regardless of whether you own the titles or are playing them via Xbox Game Pass, and it's certainly a nice collection of classics and more contemporary titles.
The numbers Microsoft are quoting are quite impressive, as they said that FPS Boost nearly doubles, and in some cases quadruples the performance of select games. That said, Bethesda's catalogue seems to be the case of the former, which is still awesome news for players.
So far, Microsoft are well ahead of Sony in terms of backwards compatibility, which we found peculiar considering all the promises given ahead of PlayStation 5's launch. The console's lead architect Mark Cerny actually touted backwards compatibility as "native" to PS5 , with no options to disable it or scale it down to cut costs.
Bethesda
Cerny's presentation from May 2020 also had him promising PS5 compatibility with "almost all" top 100 PS games at launch, which Sony rephrased in September to
exclude PS3, PS2 and PS One
. Phil Spencer said it best - underpromising and overdelivering always beats the opposite scenario, and Microsoft executed it to the letter.
Xbox Series X and S, Microsoft's next-gen console aces
- Image: 1 / 7
