Microsoft managed to secure a year of exclusivity for Rise of the Tomb Raider when it launched in November last year. That annoyed Tomb Raider fans who had opted to buy a PS4 this generation, but it looks as though the exclusivity may actually backfire in the long term for Microsoft. That’s because a big problem with the Xbox One version of the game has been fixed on PS4.

People can argue all they want about superior graphics on one platform or another, but when you ultimately sit down to play there’s only one thing that matters: gameplay. And that’s where the Xbox One version of the game fell down. Not because the gameplay was poor, but because the player’s control of the game was.

Rise of the Tomb Raider on Xbox One has a very noticeable input latency issue. There was clear input lag when playing which meant actions such as achieving a headshot were made much more difficult and frustrating. There was also an obvious and large dead zone. Those input issues remain even today on Xbox One.

For the Xbox 360, PC, and PS4 versions of the game, development was shifted from Crystal Dynamics to Nixxes. They removed the input latency issues on the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game. The launch build of the PS4 version contains the input latency suggesting it wasn’t getting fixed for the Xbox One’s main rival, however, patching the game to v1.04 sees it removed.

So, not only does the PS4 version contain a number of bug fixes, frame-rate improvements, PSVR support, and the option of 4K image quality tweaks if you play on a PS4 Pro, it also removes by far the most frustrating feature of the Xbox One version.

I wonder if Microsoft will now demand Crystal Dynamics revisits Rise of the Tomb Raider and finally fixes the input latency issue? If they don’t, how can anyone recommend buying the Xbox One version anymore?