Another Xbox First-Party Game Looks Better On PS5

gamerant.com:

The third of Xbox's multiplatform efforts on PS5, Sea of Thieves, reportedly boasts superior visuals on the Sony machine. A recent analysis comparing the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 versions of Sea of Thieves revealed the latter pulling ahead on the graphical front.

After an endless whirlwind of rumors, Xbox announced in February that it'd be releasing four games from its first-party catalog on competitor platforms PlayStation and Nintendo, namely Pentiment, Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, and Grounded. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said that this move was made with Xbox's long-term health in mind, and that gamers shouldn't expect tentpole titles like Starfield and Indiana Jones to be among the ported games. So far, Xbox has released Pentiment and Hi-Fi Rush on PS5, and in both cases, the PS5 port has exhibited some curious improvements over the equivalent Xbox Series X version.

Sea of Thieves continues the pattern, as analysis experts Digital Foundry have put the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 builds of the game under the microscope, with very intriguing results. Mirroring the situationHi-Fi Rush found itself in, Sea of Thieves has noticeably sharper, more detailed shadows on PS5. This advantage is consistent whether they're examined up-close or over long distances, with the PS5 nearly matching the highest shadow quality preset on the PC version of the game. The PS5 also draws distant foliage detail (draw distance) slightly better than the Series X — comparable to ultra settings on PC.

Both current-gen consoles offer a crisp 3840x2160p (without temporal anti-aliasing) resolution output, but the framerate comparison is interesting again. 60fps is the default goal for Sea of Thieves, but the Series X version suffers from dropped frames due to frequent frame-time spikes, possibly due to network play. PS5 is a little smoother in this regard, with the spikes occurring sporadically, but not as much as the Microsoft console. However, the PS5 version had a glaring issue where it