Black Rock's technical director David Jefferies has revealed that the 720p requirement for Xbox 360 games has been "retired" by Microsoft.
"Now we are free to make the trade-off between resolution and image quality as we see fit," wrote Jefferies as a guest contributor for Develop.
The reason, he said, is down to TV manufacturers such as Sony and Samsung equipping 720p LCD TVs with resolutions of 1366x768 rather than true 1280x720. The image, therefore, is upscaled using TV hardware, however good or bad it may be.
This is out of the developer's control and negates any effort expended trying to support that resolution in the first place. So, rather than drop features to reach 720p, Jefferies and Black Rock can now include extra anti-aliasing and graphical touches by using a slightly lower resolution.
Jefferies thanked Halo 3 for getting the ball rolling, after Microsoft "waived" its 1152x640 resolution.
But don't panic; Jefferies said this will become "less of an issue" as more and more tellies ship with full 1080p.
Black Rock made brilliant off-road racer Pure, and is currently hard at work on urban driving game Split/Second for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
If it means less juttering and smoother visuals during fast motion, I'm happy with a lower resolution.
Some of the recent video quality has been aweful on XBLA.
It all sounds good though.
My tv and console run at 1080i. My tv doesn't have the full 1080p but 1080i is pretty damn close.