A recent hack has unearthed the 2014 Xbox One software development kit, giving us an insight into a mystery we’ve seen grow over the past few months. Why are certain games now performing a bit better on Xbox One, sometimes even more so than Sonys PS4? In the mess that was Assassin’s Creed Unity, for example, the game appeared to run most smoothly on Xbox One over PS4 and PC, perplexing many onlookers. With the information from the leak, we may have some insight into what’s going on. In short, Microsoft MSFT -0.81% has opened up part of a new core to developers, which they can use for more CPU power. Previously, two out of eight CPU cores have been reserved for the operating system, but now Microsoft is willing to let one of them contribute 50-80% of its allocation to better game performance. Naturally, this isn’t free however, as Eurogamer explains: “Firstly, developers need to give up custom, game-specific voice commands in order to access the seventh core at all, while Kinect’s infra-red and depth functionality is also disabled. Secondly, the amount of CPU time available to developers varies at any given moment – system-related voice commands (“Xbox record that”, “Xbox go to friends”) automatically see CPU usage for the seventh core rise to 50 per cent. At the moment, the operating system does not inform the developer how much CPU time is available, so scheduling tasks will be troublesome.” This connects to what we already know about the Kinect, that a certain amount of CPU power was tied up for the operations of the peripheral, and now that it’s optional, that gives more leeway to developers. But it is a touch more complicated than simply erasing Kinect functionality and replacing it with something else. While 80% is the max, developers don’t always know if they’ll have that full amount if a player decides to use system voice commands, which will be a tough constraint to work within. But Microsoft reportedly will address that in a future update. It doesn’t seem like any great loss that we likely won’t see a huge selection of voice commands in upcoming games that take advantage of this new unlocked core. While voice commands may be the one thing the Kinect does somewhat competently, I see them more often used to navigate the system itself, not for in-game commands. But it is an important point that issuing system commands during a game, record, snap, party, etc, might interfere with game performance, so clearly that will have to be ironed out. This isn’t going to be some magic bullet for the Xbox One where suddenly they’ll come out with an ad campaign extolling their system as “more powerful than the PS4,” but if they can continue in the Unity tradition of running smoother than their competition, that’s certainly going to be a point in their favor. Doing so at the expense of Kinect functionality is probably nothing most players will shed a tear over. After a recent move, I have yet to even reconnect the Kinect to my One, and have no plans on doing so unless it somehow becomes mandatory for some future Xbox VR functionality, or something far-flung like that. In its current form, Kinect just isn’t worth the hassle, and that seems to be especially true on the technical side as well, judging by all this info. Source: forbes/sites/insertcoin/2015/01/04/microsoft-opens-up-more-cpu-power-on-xbox-one/
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 17:20:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015