"We've seen some things I did not think were possible."
Link to full interview: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...onald-on-power-price-and-that-new-boot-screen
Some snippets:
Link to full interview: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...onald-on-power-price-and-that-new-boot-screen
Some snippets:
You have talked about obviously more powerful visuals for games, ray tracing, virtually instant loading. But does the Xbox Series X enable any sort of gameplay innovations we haven't seen before or are not possible on any other platforms?
Jason Ronald: The answer is kind of yes across the board. Obviously, with all the advances we have in GPU power and GPU efficiency, not only is it the raw power, but it's also the innovations on top of that, things like ray tracing for better lighting, better reflections, higher quality shadows, as well as more immersive audio experiences. You also have things like variable rate shading. Beyond the raw power we're delivering, we're giving developers a lot of tools to be that much more efficient in how they use the power we're giving them
Microsoft has talked about the framerates Series X will enable. But are you saying the Xbox Series X effectively ends sub 60 frames per second games, either from Xbox itself or from third parties?
Jason Ronald: I wouldn't say it ends it, but now the creative control is in the developers' hands. Ultimately, we view resolution and framerate as a creative decision. Sometimes, from a pure gameplay aspect, 30 is the right creative decision they can make. But in previous generations, sometimes you had to sacrifice framerate for resolution. With this next generation, now it's completely within the developers' control. And even if you're building a competitive game, or an esports game, or a twitch fighter or first-person shooter, 60 frames is not the ceiling anymore. As we've seen on PC and other ecosystems, ultra high framerates and ultra low latency input, that is the precision they prefer to prioritise. So we've designed the system to put that creative control in developers hands.
Everything you've talked about makes the Xbox Series X sound incredibly powerful for a console, but I wince when I think about how much it's going to cost. What should people expect?
Jason Ronald: I think Phil [Spencer]'s been pretty transparent. We designed the system with a price point in mind. We're confident in the system we've designed, but at the same time, we're going to be agile on price.
From your perspective, how important is the teraflop debate, which I assume you're enjoying at the moment?
Jason Ronald: To me, it's about the end-to-end performance of the system. It's not one aspect versus another. What was critically important to us was sustained levels of performance, unlike anything you've seen before. And we designed the system to be a well balanced system with no bottlenecks or no compromises in any area... whether it's the CPU performance or the GPU performance - we were at the upper bounds of what was capable with a traditional rotational drive, so we knew we had to invest in things like SSD level IO performance. We designed the Xbox velocity architecture to be the ultimate solution for asset streaming.
