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The Division's beta may not match its spectacular E3 2013 demo point-for-point - back then a mascot for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One's brimming potential - but what we have today still outshines most current-gen titles in its technical spec. A post-pandemic New York sets the stage for some of the best lighting seen on console, harnessing plumes of volumetric fog, high quality screen-space reflections, and wind-affected particles. Atmosphere is king, and the rich, snow-battered look of its streets is a real showcase for the new Snowdrop engine.But where precisely is the advantage on the console front, if any? We've dug deep into both PS4 and Xbox One betas, and ultimately the answer to this lies in the game's performance, rather than visuals. Both are capped at 30fps, and each holds strong at this number around Manhattan's most hotly-contested zones. Main story missions run without a hitch on PS4, while "go to X and defeat Y" style side-missions run equally well - on Sony's machine we encounter no spikes in the target 33.3ms render time needed to hit this frame-rate.
Xbox One is almost as solid too, with just minor issues. You get a near-locked 30fps, but in blowing the front doors during the Madison Field Hospital main mission, it shows a 28fps lurch downward not seen on the rival console. An adaptive v-sync is revealed at this point, and with screen-tear kicking in for a block of frames on our graph. But this is a one-off, and in scouring The Division for any other hits to performance on this machine, all side-missions come out at a flawless 30fps, and it's only a later shootout in a diner that flags a second instance of a performance drop.
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