‘ARK: Survival Evolved’ Xbox One X Enhancements Finalized, The Tether Is Sticking Around
The Xbox One X is due out in less than a month and ARK: Survival Evolved is on the list of games that will be enhanced. Studio Wildcard confirmed the resolution and framerate options that will be available for the open-world survival title for the new console in a community post early Saturday morning. Unfortunately, the tether is not going to go away completely as previously promised.
ARK: Survival Evolved will have two graphics options for the Xbox One X and both will support HDR lighting. A “Detailed Graphics” version will run the game at 1440 and 30 frames per second (fps). This will be roughly equivalent to the High-quality graphics settings on the PC.
The second graphics option to be provided is to run ARK: Survival Evolved at 1080 with a frame rate up to 60 fps. It will be interesting to see if the game is able to reach 60 fps and how often it can maintain it. The expansive maps combined with large numbers of creatures, and the ability for players to build massive structures makes the framerate fluctuate wildly on even powerful PCs.
Studio Wildcard promises the extra memory in the Xbox One X will result in the elimination of out of memory issues that is one of the frequent causes of crashes. Additionally, ARK: Survival Evolved will have faster loading times and better streaming of assets thanks to the console’s faster hard drive and the ability to cache data into RAM.
It’s not all good news and gum drops for ARK: Survival Evolved on the Xbox One X. Studio Co-Founder and Lead Developer Jeremy Stieglitz previously stated the tether used when hosting a game locally or on a non-dedicated server would be removed when playing on the new console. That’s not quite the case as the tether will not be present when playing local co-op, but will be present when playing on a non-dedicated server.
The presence of the tether on non-dedicated servers is due to CPU limitations with the Xbox One X. The tether range has been increased on the Xbox One X, but Studio Wildcard has not provided a number of just how much.
Mysterious Mysteries: Introducing ???????, ARK Digest 51, & Community Crunch 107!https://t.co/4WnKIxL9Pq#playARK pic.twitter.com/vOblRR5Xeg
— ARK: Survival Evolved (@survivetheark) October 14, 2017
Meanwhile, the ability to rent servers for ARK: Survival Evolved is still on track to be available October 25. Server provider Nitrado has an article available explaining the price structure, setup, and pre-order details for the rentable servers.
The Windows 10 release of ARK: Survival Evolved that will enable Xbox Play Anywhere and cross-play between the PC and Xbox One consoles is also still targeting November. As previously explained by the developers, the latest delay comes from making sure the BattlEye anti-cheat service works correctly with the game on Windows 10.
[Featured Image by Studio Wildcard]
