UPDATE - October the 30th: Call of Duty: Ghosts Producer Mark Rubin just confirmed that the game will run at 1080p native resolution on PS4. Maybe it's time for some to reconsider the alleged "credibility" of certain sources. 

Today the rather popular YouTuber ReviewTechUSA published a new video relaying all sorts of horror stories on the PS4 and Xbox One, citing "reliable sources", that of course he didn't name, in order to give credibility to some rather outlandish claims. If you really want to spend nine minutes of your time listening to completely unproven and FUD (Fear, Uncertainity, Doubt) and misinformation, you can find the video embedded at the bottom of this post for reference.

If the speaker's overly dramatic tones aren't enough to show what little credibility the whole video holds, there's a part of it that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that ReviewTechUSA's "reliable sources" not only aren't that reliable, but they don't even know the basics of game development and of how video game consoles work.

The video claims that both the PS4 and the Xbox One versions of Call of Duty: Ghosts will run in 720p resolution on both PS4 and Xbox One because "their network infrastructure is totally screwed right now". He goes on to explain that "to make the game somewhat playable online they had to cut the resolution down to 720p."

Not only this claim conflicts with what Sony's Vice President of Publisher and Developer Relations Adam Boyes publicly announced just a couple days ago (he confirmed that COD: Ghosts will run natively in 1080p on PS4), but it's also complete bogus from a technical point of view.

Resolution, or any aspect of the visuals of a game, has absolutely nothing to do with network or online gameplay. Even if you're playing online, the game's assets aren't streamed to your console via the network, but they all reside on your disk and/or hard disk. Absolutely no part of what contributes to generate a game's resolution or graphics is handled by the network.

The only case in which such a claim could hold some truth is if the game was streamed via some service like Gaikai, but quite obviously this isn't the case here.

No matter how good a game looks. No matter if it runs at 720p, 900p, 1080p or 4k. The amount of data handled by the network is exactly the same, because graphics simply aren't run by the network. The only data that is handled by the network is strictly gameplay related, like the position of the players, where they shoot, their score and so forth. Nothing of this influences graphics, and nothing related to graphics and resolution influences the network. They're simply two completely separate elements of a game's inner workings.

If the network was "totally screwed", like the video claims, the developers would not cut on resolution, but they'd be forced to cut on the number of players, in order to reduce the amount of data passing by the network itself. Yet Battlefield 4 runs with 64 players on both consoles, so it's obvious that both platforms' networks don't suffer from the problems alleged here.

Of course this shows quite clearly that ReviewTechUSA's "sources" hold no credibility whatsoever. This concept is such an elementary part of game development, that anyone even remotely associated with the industry would know about it, and would most definitely refrain from making such an outlandish claim (unless he was in a full fledged drunken stupor I guess).

It's also rather interesting to see that someone calling himself "ReviewTechUSA" doesn't know how this works. It's interesting and very telling. One thing is for sure: it's not so surprising that SCE Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida just called this video "stupid" on Twitter, because it really is. Even more than stupid, it's demonstrably inaccurate and a poor attempt to misinformation and FUD. Viewers beware.

//www.youtube.com/embed/U6h9l5Gb5hE