ARK: Survival Evolved is getting some great press at E3 2017, with some details on the upcoming Xbox One X version of the game, which will be looking and running closer to the PC version of the game.
During an interview, Studio Wildcard co-founder and co-creative director Jesse Rapczak said: "Instead of targeting 30FPS like on the other consoles, we're targeting 60FPS for the Xbox One X. I would say most of the time for PS4 Pro you would be seeing 30FPS on PS4 Pro at 1080P, whereas with the Xbox One X you're going to see double the frame rate at 1080P, 60FPS. We might even allow the frame rate to go higher than 60 FPS, but we're still looking into that. Right now it's actually uncapped but on a TV it's not that useful [because they're locked to 60Hz]".
He added: "Because ours is a multiplayer game, the complexity on the screen can be very unpredictable. Variable resolution is something we introduced this year to try and stabilize the frame rate on lower PCs and consoles so that when people go into a huge base and someone's got a hundred dinosaurs, the resolution scales down but the frame rate stays smooth. We're not targeting 4K resolution or anything like that, instead we're targeting higher quality pixels".
As for the comparisons between the PC and Xbox One X, he said: "If you think about it, it's kind of equivalent to a GTX 1070 maybe and the Xbox One X actually has 12GB of GDDR5 memory. It's kind of like having a pretty high-end PC minus a lot of overhead due to the operating system on PC. So I would say it's equivalent to a 16GB 1070 PC, and that's a pretty good deal for $499".
HDR support will be provided for ARK, with Rapczak saying: "We're definitely going to implement HDR support. It's one of those things we really like in games. I feel like HDR has a much important place in games than 3D TVs or even 4K. It does make a big difference as long as you're using it in the right circumstances. ARK at its core is an HDR game, we just tone map it for SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) for non-HDR displays. We will enable HDR on PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox One S and Xbox One X. We might do it on Windows 10 too - the game is coming on the Windows 10 Store too and it will have cross-buy and cross-play with the Xbox One version. Because it's the same code base, taking advantage of HDR in that environment. Not sure if we'll do that on Steam or not, we'll see. It's a little harder on Steam where people's system configurations vary wildly".