The Witcher 3’s Day 1 Xbox One Patch Has Some Pros, Cons

If you’re one of the many people who pre-ordered The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on the Xbox One, you might be in for a bit of a disappointing start with the game as it launches today. As investigated by the technical wizards of Digital Foundry, The Witcher 3’s Day 1 version 1.01 patch comes with both boosts in specific framerate performances, as well as some penalties to textures, shadow draw distance and some other noteworthy changes in visual fidelity.

First off, when it comes to the general framerate, it appears to be unlocked for The Witcher 3, hovering mostly at or above 30 FPS on the Xbox One before and after the patch. When the game’s never going to hit 60 FPS on consoles, I’m not sure why the framerate isn’t locked, but that’s a question to ask CD Projekt RED. Either way, it appears the biggest issue comes in cutscenes, as the framerate with the new patch shows a noticeable stutter compared to 1.00. Finally, despite PR stating that the game on Xbox One would use a dynamic resolution up from 900p that scales up to 1080p depending on GPU prioritization, the only times Digital Foundry saw the Xbox One version hit 1080p was in the title screen and in-game cutscenes, not during actual play.

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Ultimately, due to the amount of bug fixes and other optimizations that The Witcher 3 sees with its Day 1 patch, it’s worth it to update the game over sitting out for 1.02 and beyond. However, it’s still disappointing to hear that the ability to hit 1080p doesn’t really occur during user-inputted gameplay. All review copies sent out to the press prior to this weekend came to those who owned a debug PS4 system (very rare), and only now have review copies been sent out to different outlets, including us. It will be interesting to see the differences in play across several platforms, as CD Projekt RED is known to produce a supreme visual output on PC titles.

The Witcher 3 is out now on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

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