Overwatch Now Runs At 120 FPS On The Xbox Series X And S

If you’re looking for 120 FPS games to play on the Xbox Series X or S, Overwatch just got a juicy patch.

It’s part of the broader patch released for Overwatch Wednesday morning Australian time, although the updates are only available for next-gen Xbox users right now. And while Overwatch still doesn’t support HDR on consoles, Blizzard’s hero-battler will at least support 120 FPS on both the Xbox Series X and the baby-sized Series S.

Here’s the relevant bit from the official patch notes:

XBOX UPDATES

Optimized for Xbox Series X|S Enhancements

Added “Preferred Mode” graphics option which allows switching between three different presets: “Resolution”, “Balanced”, “Framerate”. These modes adjust video settings to bias towards image quality, resolution, and framerate.

• “Resolution” : This mode prefers higher-resolution output at the cost of some image-quality (Series X: 4K @ 60Hz, Series S: 1440p @ 60Hz)

• “Balanced” : This mode prefers image-quality at the cost of resolution (Series X: 1440p @ 60Hz, Series S: 1080p @ 60Hz)

• “Framerate” : This mode prefers higher frame-rate at 120 frames-per-second at the cost of both image-quality and resolution (Series X: 1440p @ 120Hz, Series S: 1080p @ 120Hz)

• NOTE: Not you must have a TV that supports 120Hz or VRR (Variable-Refresh-Rate) to fully take advantage of the “Framerate” mode

What’s interesting is that the Xbox updates weren’t initially in the patch notes when I first loaded up the page this morning. I sent an email to Blizzard’s local team to check whether the notes were legitimate, and if so, when the PS5 would be getting similar improvements. They hadn’t gotten back to me at the time of writing, but the 120 FPS mode is absolutely a new inclusion from today.

What’s cool here is that people have a good variety of choice. I don’t know why you’d pick the balanced over the framerate mode — most TVs are capable of doing 120Hz at 1440p, and the Xbox One / Xbox One X was patched to support 1440p/120Hz in 2018.

Still, the cooler thing here is getting 120 FPS on the cheaper Xbox Series S. If more games can squeeze that performance out of a machine that’s basically a Xbox Game Pass device, its value will become super hard to beat when retailers start discounting the hell out of it. We’ll also keep you posted as to when Overwatch gets a similar performance patch for the PS5.