Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II cannot consistently maintain 30fps on Xbox Series X/S

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II cannot consistently maintain 30fps on Xbox Series X/S

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is available to players now, and on PC it’s a demanding but visually impressive game – if you have the right hardware. But what about consoles? Prior to release, it was announced that Hellblade II would only have one visual mode at 30 frames per second on Xbox Series X/S, which was intended to ensure stability at this rate.

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II cannot consistently maintain 30fps on Xbox Series X/S

ElAnalistaDeBits tested the Xbox version of Hellblade 2 and the results are not as positive as expected. The full analysis takes about 15 minutes, but here are the highlights:

According to the analysis, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II runs at a dynamic resolution of 2560x1070p and an average of about 2304x963p on Xbox Series X, and at a dynamic resolution of 1920x803p and an average of about 1472x615p on Xbox Series S. Visual quality on Series X is similar to high settings on PC. whereas the Series S exhibits slightly lower quality.

Unfortunately, neither the Xbox Series X nor Series S can maintain a stable 30 frames per second. Both consoles achieve 30 fps approximately 80% of the time, but frame rate drops often occur during more visually intense and dynamic scenes. The Xbox Series X can drop to the mid 25fps, while the Xbox Series S can drop to the low 20-25fps. Interestingly, both systems experience difficulties at different points, which may be due to the dynamic resolution characteristics of each console.

The developers will probably carry out additional optimization, but this situation once again reminds us that the console hardware is noticeably outdated. If the game didn’t have a cinematic mode with black bars, most likely the picture quality would have to be reduced to achieve 30 fps.