The tech experts at Digital Foundry have completed their analysis of Borderlands 4 on console, and confirmed a gradual worsening of framerate with continuous playtime, even on PlayStation 5 Pro and Xbox Series X.
As revealed in a new video published to YouTube, Digital Foundry found performance starts dipping after around 30 minutes to an hour, which it called “too intrusive on the overall experience, too regular an interruption.” Even after a completely fresh boot, the game is still prone to framerate drops.
Gearbox development chief Randy Pitchford has acknowledged the problem on social media, promising incoming improvements. As a workaround, Pitchford suggested console players quit Borderlands 4 and restart. Digital Foundry’s Tom Morgan confirmed this does restore performance, but criticized the situation, saying “resetting the game every hour should really not be an expected solution for players.”
“Each console is prone to sizeable, sub-60fps lurches given enough time on the clock, and it’s just a matter of how long you’re willing to keep playing before deciding to reset,” Morgan added.
Morgan also called for an emergency patch. Gearbox has promised more fixes are on the way, after yesterday’s patch tackled PC crashes.
“Borderlands 4 justifies the six-year wait since the last entry with some big technical upgrades via Unreal Engine 5,” Morgan said. “Despite the team’s huge ambition here, though, the game’s performance at launch is struggling on console if 60fps is the goal, and a patch cannot come soon enough. The gradually worsening framerates on PS5, Pro, and Series X lead to some dire mid-30fps passages of play after a while. And resetting the game every hour should really not be an expected solution for players.
“This lack in polish at launch also shows in its bugs where broken NPC pathfinding and flickering lighting are just a couple of issues I’ve experienced. The promise of Borderlands 4 is compelling, but following on from MGS Delta and Oblivion Remastered, we’re once again looking at a major UE5 release with framerate issues on every format. And once again, we’re having to hang tight for an update to save the day.”
So, what’s causing the problem? As Morgan points out, the situation with Borderlands 4 rekindles memories of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, another Unreal Engine 5 title where performance degraded over time on console and also improved with a fresh boot. It’s unconfirmed for now, but the leading theory for Borderlands 4, as with Oblivion, is there’s some form of memory leak at play, or, as Morgan put it, “a cache of data not being flushed from system memory that eventually catches up on the player.”
Borderlands 4: All Vault Hunter Skill Trees Ranked
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What about the PC version? Borderlands 4 is currently on a mixed Steam review rating, with most of the negative comments revolving around PC performance. Digital Foundry has said its initial analysis of Borderlands 4 on PC shows significant stutter problems, and have advised against running the game on its ‘Badass’ graphics setting, which suggests there are indeed problems with the Unreal Engine 5 title.
Gearbox has said addressing PC performance is a “top priority” for the studio. In the meantime, the studio pointed to a Borderlands 4 Nvidia Optimization guide on Steam, advising players how to optimize their graphics settings for “better performance and framerates” on PC with the Nvidia app, although users report mixed results.
Gearbox has also issued a piece of advice to PC gamers that to me reads like an effort to prevent players from making knee-jerk reactions to the game’s performance as soon as they’ve changed their settings: “Please note that any time you change any of your graphics settings, your shaders will need to recompile. Please keep playing for at least 15 minutes to see how your PC’s performance has changed.”
All eyes are on Gearbox right now amid an internet backlash to the performance of Borderlands 4 — which has come despite huge player numbers on Steam. Pitchford himself has set his sights on winning angry Borderlands 4 players over on social media. Since Borderlands 4’s huge Steam launch last week, Pitchford has issued confusing comments on why the console version of Borderlands 4 lacks a field of view (FOV) slider, promised that it would have been impossible to break the Borderlands 4 servers through sheer weight of player numbers alone, told people to “code your own engine and show us how it’s done, please,” and declared Borderlands 4 “a premium game made for premium gamers.” He’s even started telling Borderlands 4 players to refund the game on Steam if they’re that upset.
If you are delving into Borderlands 4, don’t go without updated hourly SHiFT codes list. We’ve also got a huge interactive map ready to go and a badass Borderlands 4 planner tool courtesy of our buds at Maxroll. Plus check out our expert players’ choices for which character to choose (no one agreed).
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
