Tekken 7 brawled its way onto PC and home consoles last week, and, for the most part, response has been very positive. Or, at least it has been amongst mainstream players – more serious fans have criticized Tekken 7 for an increase in input lag, particularly on the PlayStation 4. Get ready, we’re about to jump into the deep end here!
At least weekend’s Combo Breaker 2017 tournament, several players noticed significant input lag (the amount of time between pushing a button and your character responding on screen) in the PS4 version of Tekken 7. Some players even bumped the game’s resolution down to 720p in hopes of improving the situation. But is input lag really an issue? Or was this just a classic “blaming the controller” situation?
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According to Nigel Woodall, who’s an expert at testing fighting game input lag, the PS4 is definitely at a disadvantage. I’ll skip over all Woodall’s complex methodology (he explains it in the video above), but the takeaway is that Tekken 7 for PS4 has 120.5 milliseconds of input lag, while the Xbox One version has only 104.2 ms. That means there’s almost a full extra frame of lag on the PS4.
Sample of images from the video showing what happens most of the time. X1 on left, PS4 on right. See my YT video (last post). pic.twitter.com/KRHGfOV7dc
— Nigel Woodall (@noodalls) June 3, 2017
That probably doesn’t mean much to you, but high-level competitive players win and lose matches based on single frames. Simply put, even though the PS4 has some features the Xbox One version doesn’t, like full 1080p resolution, the Xbox One version will be preferable for most hardcore players.
For the sake of comparison, Street Fighter V on PS4 has 88.6 ms of input delay, Injustice 2 has 92.4 ms, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 has 58.2 ms, and last generation’s Tekken Tag Tournament 2 on PS3 had 95.5 ms, so Tekken 7 on PS4 really is fairly sluggish comparatively. Again, this isn’t something you and your buddies hanging in the basement playing Tekken 7 on a Saturday afternoon have to worry about, but it may hinder the game’s esports growth. Hopefully Bandai Namco tightens the game up in future updates.
Tekken 7 is available on PC, Xbox One, and PS4. You can check out WWG’s full review, right here.
