Watch Dogs misses 1080p target on consoles

Ubisoft has confirmed that neither the Xbox One nor the PS4 will be capable of playing its upcoming hack-'em-up Watch Dogs at 1080p, despite claims by Sony to the contrary - suggesting the game is having last-minute performance problems.

Late last week, Sony published a product post to its official PlayStation site claiming that the PS4 port of Watch Dogs would be the only console release of the game capable of showing off the engine's impressive visuals, offering a full 60 frames per second at a 1080p resolution. The message was clear: as expected, third-party developers are finding the difference between the PS4 and the Xbox One, with the former having a more powerful graphics processor but the latter boasting a chunk of EDRAM on the chip itself, is allowing them to get more out of their games on Sony's console.

The news post disappeared over the weekend, however, and Ubisoft has now confirmed why: the PS4 port of Watch Dogs will only run at a 900p resolution, and will be locked to 30 frames per second. That's a considerable departure from Sony's claims, which were likely based on an earlier build of the title - and suggest that Ubisoft has had trouble optimising the engine, despite a delay to the game which was supposed to launch in November alongside the two next-generation consoles.

Sony still has cause for celebration, however: the PS4 version might not have come close to the 1080p60 figure promised by the company last week, but it's still managed to outperform its Xbox One rival. According to Ubisoft's official figures, the Xbox One port will be limited to 792p resolution in order to hit the same 30 frames per second cap as the PS4. Both, naturally, will be outperformed by the Windows release of the game - providing, that is, you've got the hardware to accommodate the title.

Sony has not yet commented on what led it to claim 1080p60 performance for the title, nor Ubisoft on why the PS4 release was unable to reach those heady heights.