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Windows Central: Xbox Series X: What do game developers say about next-gen? We asked several for their thoughts.

Dimple

Dimple

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www.windowscentral.com

Xbox Series X: What do game developers say about next-gen? We asked several for their thoughts.

The Xbox Series X is upon us. But what do game developers think of this next-gen beast? We spoke to several to find out their thoughts.
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With the Xbox Series X and next-gen just months away, speculation about the capabilities of next-gen systems is heating up. As always, the proof is in the gaming, and we may not have to wait much longer to see what the Xbox Series X is truly capable of.

The sheer volume of technical wizardry, both from Microsoft's engineers and the game developers themselves, cannot possibly be understated. To that end, the raw specs of the Xbox Series X only tell part of the story, of course. We have new APIs, new developer tools, new graphics features, and various other improvements worth taking into consideration.

To get a better understanding of what that means for game developers and architects, we spoke to Microsoft and various third-party game devs to get their thoughts on what next-gen truly means for Xbox fans, and what aspects of the Xbox Series X are most exciting.
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Joel Baker, Technical Director at Hinterland Games
(The Long Dark) on raytracing:
I can already see potential uses for it in games like The Long Dark, where we would be able to simulate physically accurate weather and wind by sending some rays into the world and then having the audio and physics change dynamically based on where the snow is accumulating or melting. These sorts of things are going to allow some really immersive experiences that weren't easily achievable before.
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Much more at the link.
 
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Trago

Trago

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Oct 25, 2017
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A lot of devs seem to be excited for the addition of an SSD in these new consoles.
 

Deleted member 22750

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modiz

modiz

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Seems like the aspect that developers are most excited about is the SSD and IO capabilities, followed by ray tracing, great. Now I just need to see the games already....
 
Theorry

Theorry

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Coalition

With the Xbox Series X, out of the gate, we reduced our load-times by more than 4x without any code changes. With the new DirectStorage APIs and new hardware decompression, we can further improve I/O performance and reduce CPU overhead, both of which are essential to achieve fast loading. As we look to the future, the Xbox Series X's Sampler Feedback for Streaming (SFS) is a game-changer for how we think about world streaming and visual level of detail. We will be exploring how we can use it in future titles to both increase the texture detail in our game beyond what we can fit into memory, as well as reduce load times further by increasing on-demand loading to just before we need it, instead of pre-loading everything up-front as we would use a more traditional 'level loading' approach.
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McFly

McFly

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SSD is THE next gen feature. Playing games now and you can see how hard drive is showing its limitation.
 
Thiago

Thiago

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Really sounds like SSD is the biggest aspect to be excited about.
 
christocolus

christocolus

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Trago said:
A lot of devs seem to be excited for the addition of an SSD in these new consoles.
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Yeah, The SSD, Velocity architecture and Raytracing capabilities are mentioned. The Coalition dev says that due to the SSD they don't even need to optimize to see much faster loading results. Next gen is going to be really good. Imagine the results from their 15 + 1P dev studios...this might be the best Xbox gen.
 
Proven

Proven

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christocolus said:
Yeah, The SSD, Velocity architecture and it's Raytracing capabilities are repeated a lot. The Coalition dev says that due to the SSD they don't even need to optimize to see much faster loading results. Next gen is going to be really good. Imagine the results from their 15 + 1P dev studios...this might be the best Xbox gen.
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This is going to be the best gen for Xbox pretty easily.
 
Proven

Proven

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Raytracing is going to be so good on the Series X. Hoping Infinite gameplay shows it.
 

Deleted member 45460

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As this is an Xbox related thread I'm taking it that we should focus on commenting on Xbox and not bringing up/mentioning competing platforms? That is how other threads are moderated. Either way I'm really excited for next-gen, and can't wait to finally see the Series X in action and what games are coming for it. Shouldn't be too long now before we get to see actual games.
 

Deleted member 20297

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Microsoft's focus on the SSD which goes way beyond just putting just a random one in was a very smart decision while not forgetting about the main purpose of the console, fast computing. This will be a great gen for them!
 
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christocolus

christocolus

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doncabesa said:
As this is an Xbox related thread I'm taking it that we should focus on commenting on Xbox and not bringing up/mentioning competing platforms? That is how other threads are moderated. Either way I'm really excited for next-gen, and can't wait to finally see the Series X in action and what games are coming for it. Shouldn't be too long now before we get to see actual games.
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just report any trolls who try to derail this thread.
 
thuway

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doncabesa said:
As this is an Xbox related thread I'm taking it that we should focus on commenting on Xbox and not bringing up/mentioning competing platforms? That is how other threads are moderated. Either way I'm really excited for next-gen, and can't wait to finally see the Series X in action and what games are coming for it. Shouldn't be too long now before we get to see actual games.
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That's fine but this should bring nuance to the discussion as to how important IO and SSD are.
 
Proven

Proven

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I'm not gonna comment much in this thread because I can see who it attracts but the way some people talk about the Xbox SSD is as if it doesn't exist or it's an HDD lol
 
alstrike

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Hey Hinterland, stop drooling over RT and make TLD run at 60fps on consoles. Or do you need a new generation to do that?
 

Bradbatross

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Looks like Phil Spencer's gamble of making the most powerful console with a super-fast SSD is going to pay off... Jesus Christ.
 
RoboPlato

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Every interview about next-gen makes it clear how excited devs are for SSDs. I cannot wait to see what this hardware can do.
 

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thuway said:
That's fine but this should bring nuance to the discussion as to how important IO and SSD are.
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I love discussion that compares things, and consistency. As someone who uses an SSD every day in my main computer I absolutely love it, it thermal throttles often but it's still so much faster than my old mechanical hdd that I could never go back to having my OS on one.
 
I KILL PXLS

I KILL PXLS

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I can already see potential uses for it in games like The Long Dark, where we would be able to simulate physically accurate weather and wind by sending some rays into the world and then having the audio and physics change dynamically based on where the snow is accumulating or melting. These sorts of things are going to allow some really immersive experiences that weren't easily achievable before.
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Yeah, I find this the most interesting point. Very curious to see what other uses for ray tracing devs think of that aren't the obvious visual applications we normally associate with it.
 
bevishead

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FacelessSamurai said:
The real gamble is more about whether or not he focused too much on it and if 2.5GB/s was plenty and if the faster SSD PS5 has will really make a noticeable difference.
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I'm sure Sony first party companies will find some unique and innovative ways to put the extra speed to use. How much of a difference it will make to third parties remains to be seen.
 
asd202

asd202

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Barring covid impact on the video game industry I wonder how fast SSD will become mandatory for PC games.
 
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