Borderlands 3 is coming to the Playstation 5 and the Xbox Series X and it looks like the game performs a lot better on the next generation of consoles. Arstechnica was able to go hands-on with the new Xbox Series X from Microsoft and gave the backward compatibility feature a run for its money. They tested the loading times for various games and measured the performance. And the loading times for Borderlands 3 improvement from XB1X to Series X is a staggering 73.5 percent !!! This is a backward compatibility test and is therefore done with the current console version of Borderlands 3 and not the recently announced next-gen version.
Loading Time Xbox Series X
- Orange: Is the load time of the Xbox Series X on its NVMe 4.0 drive.
- Blue: Is the load time of the Xbox Series X using a USB3.1 drive. Since NVMe 4.0 drives are expensive, it’s interesting to see the performance difference.
- Green: Is the load time of the Xbox One X using a USB3.1 drive.
As you can see from the chart, booting up Borderlands 3 on the next Xbox cuts your load time in more than half if you use your “old” USB 3.1 drive. But when you boot up the game using the new NVMe 4.0 drive it’s like a quarter of the time, give or take a second. The loading times for Borderlands 3 on consoles have been a thorn in the eyes of us Vault Hunters. Therefore farming bosses isn’t the most pleasant experience. We still have to wait and see what the next-gen upgrade does to the game’s performance but this performance benchmark looks amazing. I hope the PS5 will see similar results.
Free Upgrade
If you own Borderlands 3 on the PS4 or Xbox One you can claim a free upgrade for the game if you stay in the same console family. So if you upgrade from PS4 to PS5 or from Xbox One to Xbox Series X. This free upgrade included all your content. This means if you purchased any DLCs or the season pass, the content will also be available for you on your new console free of charge. You can jump right in as you can also carry over your save file and pick up right where you left off. Now you can enjoy Borderlands 3 running at 60fps in 4K on your new system. It’s also possible to play the game in horizontal or vertical split-screen with a friend or go all out with 4 player split-screen.
If you have any questions about this, I answered a bunch of questions about this free upgrade.
