900p/60 is more demanding than 1080p/30, not just in terms of pixels per second, but also cos a lot of other things don't scale with resolution, like draw calls.

It also might simply be that the developers were going for a sense of desolation and emptiness; take for instance this area in Nier Automata, designed for hardware a generation more powerful than Xenoblade Chronicles X; it also doesn't have much going on, because that's not what the designers wanted to convey.

I wonder how many of the folks who are talking about the landscape of the desert being barren are stating as such in good faith. We have barely glimpsed this game and for all we know this is just the slightest tease of what the areas we’ll be exploring via motorbike will be like. We haven’t even seen that lush environment featured in the first trailer. Retro and Nintendo have been keeping this game hidden very well and they’re choosing carefully what we get to see at this stage.

I’m not saying the fears from people aren’t warranted, but I think a bit of patience and self control are needed as I absolutely know we haven’t seen the final marketing push or the main trailer that will be used to advertise this game to the general public.

I understand the resistance to this new direction for the series, but I also know that it’s been almost 20 years since the last game and making Metroid Prime 3 all over again wasn’t going to set the world on fire and certainly wouldn’t have pushed Metroid beyond its existing 3 million unit cap.

Congrats! I'm barely at 500 

Crazy that I’m almost at 10,000 as I’ve had extended periods of inactivity. Of course when you’ve been around as long as we have it kind of just…happens. 

Based on the desert key art that was shown months ago I assumed we’d be shinesparking in that environment and I was excited about the idea of launching straight up into the air. I don’t think any 3D game has realized the potential promised in Super Metroid with that ability. Who knows, maybe if this title sells there will still be a possibility for that. And maybe it just doesn’t work in 1st person. Screw attack, while fun to see and use in MP3 wasn’t the same as in Super Metroid and this 1st person point of view probably is the limiting factor. 

Regarding the gunship, I really didn’t like the way it was utilized in Prime 3 so I’m happy that I haven’t seen it used yet like that. Who knows, we may be zipping around in the gunship anyway, though I have a feeling it’s locked behind the portal we went through to get to Viewros. 

Daemon X Machina Titanic Scion reminds me a lot of Xenoblade X but in addition to exo suits and a mech. You get a motorcycle and a robot horse to traverse the world. First area is a big desert. So two Sci Fi games this year give me a bike. I'm down.

Hear me out. A bike mission were you have to race a Dachora. And while you race it, it teaches you some sick bike techniques. And if you win, it gives you an energy tank.

Yeah, but you have to take into consideration that Xenoblade X pushes that resolution WHILE having a bigger world more detailed open areas (that are not separated by loading screens, btw). It's not as simple as "Metroid has better framerate, Metroid's desert pushes the system more".

And I'm happy you brought up Nier Automata, because the desert location looks far more attractive than the Prime 4 one.

Maybe it's not about having more stuff. Maybe it's just about keepint it simple, but good looking. Something Prime 4 doesn't seem to be doing (in this particular location. The rest of the game looks stunning).

Yeeessss! Sadly, if we follow the lore that the Prime series takes place before Super Metroid then Samus hasn’t even met the Etecoons or the Dachora yet. It’s kind of a shame. 

Now that being said, there’s nothing suggesting that she met them in Super Metroid. Maybe they had already been old pals and journeyed alongside Samus to teach her new techniques. I hate the timelines, really. I love the way that Zelda handles it where it’s all generational and it isn’t unusual to see characters from different games in different settings and different times. 

Yeah, Prime being before Metroid II makes this a bit difficult... But if I remember correctly, Samus never specifies when she met them. in Fusion she says something like "in the past, these creatures helped me discover some of my hidden abilities". So, she could have met them before Super. After all, they seem very adept to fly spaceships xD

The problem with the Metroid timeline is that there is a very clear discrepance between Retro Studios and Sakamoto, in that the later doesn't really want to acknowledge the Prime series story. It's sad, but I guess each series goes their own way...

Depends on where the bottleneck is.
If your limited by the CPU and not the GPU for your render time, then 1080P/30 may be lighter on the system.