This weekend 343 Industries is holding its latest technical preview forHalo Infinite, opening up the more of the game to more potential players. The test introduces newHalo Infinitegame modes, offering a wide swathe of content forHalofans to check out before the first-person shooter’s launch in December. It also allows for a more thorough deep dive into the performance ofHalo Infinite, with comparisons to previous technical previews. One comparison discoveredHalo Infinite’s Performance Mode on console appears to have been dramatically improved.
Performance Mode, to clarify, is a graphics option for consoles that typically deprioritizes resolution and other visual features in trade for a higher framerate. An analysis by Digital Foundry recently found thatHalo Infinite’s new Performance Mode onXbox Series Xprovided an impressive boost compared to previous tests. The latest Performance Mode improvements enableHalo Infiniteto run at an impressive 120 fps on Xbox Series X. The tradeoff is that the game’s resolution drops to around 1440p, with some rare drops to 1080p.
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Previous iterations of Performance Mode on Xbox Series X apparently didn’t allow players to toggle between Performance Mode and Quality Mode. The toggle was apparently bugged, meaning players were stuck in the 60 fps quality mode regardless of whether they toggled it to Performance Mode or not. Digital Foundry does not there’s a bug in the current technical preview thatswapsHalo Infiniteback to Quality Modewhen the game is reset, so players have to change it back to Performance each time they start the game.
The Xbox Series X wasn’t the only console to receive improvements toHalo Infinite’s Performance Mode, however. Digital Foundry’s testing also found that theXbox One X consolealso saw a boost. The older console now provides a stable 60 fps frame rate in its performance mode, also sticking to a 1440p resolution with dips to 1080p. Xbox One X Performance Mode previously struggled to deliver 60 fps consistently.
There is one other notable difference regarding Performance Mode on a different Xbox platform. Prior to the latest technical preview, theXbox Series Salso had a Performance Mode reaching 120 fps. That mode has now been removed, withHalo Infinitehaving just a single stable 60 fps mode on the lesser next-gen Xbox console. As for the Xbox One S, it’s providing a single graphics mode with a capped 30 fps.
Overall, that’s a surprisingly robust selection of options for prospectiveHalo Infiniteplayersnow available. Xbox Series X players with televisions or monitors that even support 120 fps are likely in the minority, but 343’s got a great mode for them regardless. Otherwise, the Xbox Series X’s dynamic 4K Quality Mode with 60 fps should be more than enough to meetHalofans' expectations.
Halo Infinitereleases December 8 on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
