Forza Motorsport is using a cheaper means of RT in-game versus in replays;
Eurogamer article has a few quotes on this from Alex:
Just putting that out there if you're thinking the game's going to have balls-to-the-wall full RT GI at native 4K or whatnot. I strongly doubt that. Maybe they can do it with a locked 30 FPS mode but I don't think a Forza Motorsport's been 30 FPS since the first entry, and that was eons ago.
I mean in terms of the company with the marketing rights, among platform holders. Microsoft have marketing rights on Atomic Heart, no? I figure that was part of the deal when they got it for Game Pass Day 1. So I was at least expecting them to help with optimization of the Xbox versions, not just to make sure the game runs as well as possible Day 1 but also because of the optics when it's something you have marketing rights to.
But it seems like they did not care to do this, because the Xbox versions sound like they have a lot of performance issues that shouldn't be there. Or, they did, yet somehow this was the best they could do in help? Either way something either went wrong or Microsoft's idea of how to help devs on a game they have marketing rights to is severely lacking.
Not really wanting to bring a comparison to Sony in this but, you can see how with the games they have marketing rights on, they ALWAYS provide technically assistance & support for the developers. They know the optics would look bad if a game they have marketing rights on (and is a multiplat, no less) ran like garbage on PlayStation icomapred to competing devices. That's effectively a waste of getting the marketing rights.
We've seen Microsoft provide that type of technical support for games like The Ascent, but I guess they're only willing to do it if they have full exclusivity or timed exclusivity. Doesn't work out for them in this example.
Get what you're saying and you'd be right in most cases. But I'm just particularly baffled why Atomic Heart specifically is having these issues on Series X (and S) considering, IIRC, Microsoft have the marketing rights?
Did Microsoft simply not provide any technical assistance to the dev team whatsoever? Were they thinking about the optics and how having the worst-performing version of a game they got for Game Pass, would hurt them? Especially considering Xbox has been struggling a bit compared to PS5 in other, bigger multiplat releases the past few months? Games that, FWIW, are no longer cross-gen?
I'm guessing Microsoft either only provide that type of help with games that are fully console exclusive or timed exclusive to Xbox console-wise, neither of which are the case with Atomic Heart. But you'd think they would want to make sure the game's runny well relative to the PS5 version, for their Game Pass subscribers, right? At the very least it shows a lack of care on Microsoft's part IMO, when other companies like Sony have shown they're willing to invest in providing technical support for games they have marketing rights to, even if they're multiplat and launching on other consoles Day 1.