During the “Bethesda joins Xbox” roundtable, Xbox General Manager Aaron Greenberg promised that some of the 20 backwards-compatible Bethesda games that would join the Xbox Game Pass lineup would likely get FPS Boost enhancements on Xbox Series X and S consoles.
Well, we apparently won’t have too long to wait, as the first five games from Bethesda to receive support for the new 60fps feature have been revealed…and then quickly covered up, from the looks of it.
IGN, The Verge and several other credible sites have claimed that the hosts of the Official Xbox Podcast: Xbox Live Director of Programming, Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, and Xbox Live Social Media Director, Jeff Rubenstein; confirmed the list of five games during this week’s latest episode (Episode 738). According to the reports, Dishonored: Definitive Edition, Prey, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 will all be receiving the FPS Boost treatment as part of the upcoming March Xbox Update, which will also include support for the new Xbox Wireless Headset as well as new language support options, among other improvements.
The problem is, after watching and re-watching the entire episode on YouTube , I was unable to find any official statement from the mouths of either Hryb or Rubenstein that these games were being added. In fact, the only game discussed on the episode in regards to improved framerates on Xbox Series X and S was Overwatch, which earlier in the week discretely received a patch impressively allowing for three different performance modes, Resolution (4K, 60Hz), Balanced (1140p, 60Hz) and Framerate (1440p, 120Hz).
Interestingly enough, at the timestamp 14:14, which is where website Windows Central claims that the announcement was made, the video abruptly skips forward in mid-conversation as Hryb and Rubenstein discuss the overall list of Bethesda additions to Xbox Game Pass, suggesting that the rumored announcement was edited out following the reports made by IGN and others (perhaps it was too soon to announce?). Consequently, as I was unable to find the actual discussion in the episode where the five Bethesda games were confirmed by name to be getting FPS Boost updates, nor successful in finding any other official source from Microsoft or Xbox verifying the list, I’ve elected to consider this as a rumor that just so happens to be highly corroborated by several reliable sources.
Assuming that the reports are true, the five Bethesda games will be joining New Super Lucky’s Tale, Watchdogs 2, Sniper Elite 4, UFC 4 and Far Cry 4 as the first 10 Xbox titles to support Microsoft’s FPS Boost feature. The addition of Fallout 4 and Skyrim would be particularly auspicious, as Digital Foundry has recently featured both games capable of running on Xbox Series X and S at 60fps right now using community-created mods that those games openly support (although with some caveats, such as not being able to earn achievements when such mods are enabled).
The Xbox March Update, which will likely bring with it FPS Boost enhancements for the rumored Bethesda titles above, should land on Xbox Series X and S very soon. Given that one of its main new features is support for the Xbox Wireless Headset, which will arrive on store shelves on March 16th, the update is all but imminent; just like with all the other Xbox news this week, we won’t have long to wait for answers.
