Borderlands 3 tested on PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S – can next-gen sustain 60fps?

With PS5 and Xbox Series X in its hands, developer Gearbox’s first port of call it seems is to give Borderlands 3 the next-gen treatment. Through a sizeable patch, the studio taps into the strengths of each machine with two modes – targeting 60fps and 120fps respectively. But how close does the game come to its performance targets and, as ever, where does Xbox Series S slot into the line-up?

Targeting 4K at 60fps is the primary objective for the new version of the game, with plenty of behind the scenes tweaks in improving performance, beyond leaning into the raw horsepower of the hardware itself. Collision detection is extensively revamped, for example, but Gearbox also leans into more traditional optimisations – such as the use of dynamic resolution scaling (DRS) meaning that the game engine adapts its pixel counts based on GPU load. It’s something that in practice doesn’t show up too often, with few deviations from the target 4K – to the point where my pixel counts showed very little variance from 3840×2160, even when the game was dropping frames (2016p was the minimum resolution I found).

Xbox Series S on the other hand, lives up to its spec by targeting 1440p as the maximum resolution, with more obvious drops in resolution, down to a 2112×1188 lower bounds. Crucially though, it’s a well-worked version that holds to 60fps just as well as the two premium machines – in fact, I think it actually runs a touch better. One big catch to Series S is that there’s no toggle between resolution or performance modes, as there is on PS5 or Series X. It’s 1440p60 with DRS and there is no 120Hz support at all.

The big advantage in owning PS5 and Series X is the ability to leverage a high refresh rate display. To summarise, the resolution mode runs at 4K60fps on each, but the performance mode changes the console output to 120Hz – in this case targeting a native 1080p. This uses DRS as well to try and lock to 120fps and the lowest value I’ve caught is 1440×810 in cutscenes.

Visual comparisons are worth touching on here, though after speaking to the developers at Gearbox, it seems that the focus is primarily on hitting 4K60. That said, shadows are tweaked on PS5, giving more generous shadow draw distances, and higher quality outlines on dynamic shadows across the ground, when stacked up against PS4 Pro. On top of this there is a further wrinkle to comparisons between PS5 and Series X: just about everything is squarely matched between the two, but plant density has an advantage on Sony’s machine. This isn’t a revelation, as we saw the same thing on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. Rather than being a measure for system performance, this particular difference seems to be legacy code inherited by the new machines too, giving PS5 a distinctive advantage across the opening wastelands in foliage density. Shadow quality also appears to be improved too.