According to Ubisoft, “On new-gen systems the game will run at 900p on PS4 and 792p on Xbox One, at 30 frames-per-second on both consoles.” As to why they did not try to make the game run at a higher resolution?
Well according to the game’s creative director, Jonathan Morin, “Resolution is a number, just like framerate is a number. All those numbers are valid aspects of making games, but you make choices about the experience you want to deliver. In our case, dynamism is everything.”
So it seems like Ubisoft has decided that resolution isn’t everything, which we have to agree with. After all it is the gameplay that matters the most in the end, although having a beautiful game with exceptional gameplay would be ideal. Morin also states that the overall experience of the game was the most important to them, “That’s important. Resolution has nothing to do with that. That’s why stuff like resolution can scale a bit down so that we never compromise the soul of Watch Dogs.”