Despite this extra upscale, Xbox One still presents Lothric in a flattering light. In play, the one truly perceptible shortfall of its native 900p image is that pixel crawl flares up more aggressively across foliage - though otherwise its visuals hold up very well. Bizarrely, all HUD elements on Xbox One (such as menus and health bars) are also rendered at 900p. Rather than setting these 2D elements to display at 1080p over gameplay - a tactic used in most sub-native titles - they're instead put through the same scaling process. As a result we get a light blur to item illustrations, one that shows up next to PS4's, and it's a shame given there is a commonly practiced workaround here.

Visually it's a clear-cut case in favour of PS4, and we'd have hoped Xbox One's graphical sacrifices might translate to a matching level of performance. As we've already seen in isolation, Xbox One is capped at 30fps with v-sync, but has dips to the mid-20s around volumetric fog effects of its opening scene, and also bosses making use of From Software's shader effects. The results aren't always smooth, but for the majority of play (at least from what we've tested to date) the game holds at 30fps.

PS4 is the preferred pick for several reasons. From Software makes a number of visual concessions on Xbox One, dropping its native resolution to 900p, and also edging down shadow and motion blur quality. None of these cuts dampen the quality of the experience to any radical degree, and it's perfectly enjoyable on Xbox One as-is. However, it's undeniable PS4 brings out the best in From Software's latest project, presenting its world at a clearer 1080p, and with a firmer grasp on its 30fps target to boot.

In such a sprawling game, we can't rule out another Blight Town situation popping up down the line - an area infamous for its 10fps drops on last-gen. However, the prospects after five hours of playing Dark Souls 3 are very positive, and we'll be sure to update this piece if anything particularly egregious crops up. As a comparison point between PS4 and Xbox One though, the division is clear, and sets a precedent for how frame-rates in rest of the game will bear out.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-dark-souls-3-face-off

1080p vs 900p, higher shadow quality, better motion blurr, sharper image on HUD & Items... usually 3-4 fps ahead (more stable 30fps).

Nothing new... PS4 ahead as usual.

However game is still running so well you probably wouldnt notice if you didnt directly compare them side by side.
Its perfectly playable on the xbox one.

Pretty sure I was reading a thread the other day where some people were saying that the gap was closing.. to me it seems on the whole about the same in most cases when it was at launch.

Even watching the video of them side by side I honestly didn't see a difference. I'm sure if I was watching both on two big TV's that I might notice a difference though.

Anyways, the game looks quite awesome!

I would still expect to see some variances in the gaps between the two versions of a given 3rd party title all the way up to rough parity, but at this point, I'm finding these PS4/XBO comparisons a lot less interesting given that it's essentially understood that the PS4 version of a given game will by default provide better performance.

Whenever there's an exception to this general rule, it doesn't mean anything other than that there are exceptions to the rule, none of which point the way to a trend where by slightly lower performing hardware will suddenly, magically see better performance across the board than the higher spec hardware.

At least Phil was honest when saying that DirectX 12 was not going to provide their console with much benefit.

Seems like PS4 is overall the best version, but never-the-less still looks great!

As usual the ps4 version is better. But it's only a factor if you own both consoles. If you only own an XB1 it doesn't matter to you, because you're getting that version.

Well, the gap is bigger than usual in this one.

Nice to know, even if it's expected.