NieR: Automata on Game Pass Better Than Steam Version
The PC version of NieR: Automata debuted on Xbox Game Pass. It turns out that this release is clearly better than the edition sold on Steam.
The PC version of NieR: Automata has just arrived on Xbox Game Pass. Subscribers who downloaded the title were surprised to discover that this edition is clearly better than the one available for two years on Steam. The version sold in Valve's store is the so-called Game of the YoRHa Edition, while the one from Game Pass is the Become As Gods edition containing DLCs. The differences are not limited only to the names and extras.
First of all, the version available in Game Pass seems to be significantly improved in terms of technical aspects. The release on Steam came out in 2019 and had quite a few problems. They caused, among other things, that the game often froze and rendered graphics at the wrong resolution, and the animations clipped. Despite good sales results, the PC version did not live to see even a single patch. Fans were forced to roll up their sleeves and fix most of these shortcomings themselves, resulting in an excellent mod called FAR (Fix Automata Resolution).
It came as quite a surprise, then, that the Game Pass edition of the game doesn't suffer from most of the problems of the Steam edition. It correctly renders graphics at correct resolutions, doesn't freeze for no reason, supports borderless windowed mode and offers the option to enable FidelityFX CAS, AMD's answer to Nvidia's DLSS.
Overall, the Game Pass version is a much more polished edition than the one available in Valve's store. Of course, with mods (not just the aforementioned FAR - Fix Automata Resolution, but also the texture-enhancing Texture Pack project) the Steam release will be the best for many people anyway, but that doesn't excuse the game's developers from the fact that these official fixes weren't implemented in the older PC edition.
So we're curious to see if the Steam version will finally get an update. It's hard to say whether this will happen. It's possible that Microsoft has paid for all these fixes specifically for Game Pass, and may not be willing to share them with the rest of the PC gamers.
