Destiny is one of the first of hopefully many games that will benefit from the additional GPU power gained by dropping Kinect processing, following the Xbox One’s June SDK release.
Phil Spencer discussed the Xbox One’s 10% GPU increase as a result of ditching Kinect in a new podcast.
Speaking with Larry ‘Major Nelson’ Hryb Spencer stressed that reserves of GPU power are normal for new consoles, and added that Kinect doesn’t need to be unplugged for the additional power to kick in. The game itself will scale accordingly.
Spencer began, “This was a point where we actually looked at the GPU reserve that we had set aside when we launched. And you always set aside these reserves not exactly knowing how people are going to use the reserves, and we’ve got more work to do to bring the reserve down as we get more efficient with stuff we’re doing in the platform.”
“This was a time when we wanted to give developers a choice on how much of the reserve, the Kinect reserve, they wanted to leave in the system,” he went on. “If they know how they’re going to use Kinect, or if they’re going to not use Kinect in their game, we wanted them to have the option at a game side to decide how much of that reserve will wait – will remain.
“Now I saw, as you did, that some of the press picked up that this had something to do with Kinect plugged into the machine… and it has nothing to do with Kinect being plugged in, in fact everyone should leave Kinect plugged in, because as soon as the game isn’t running anymore, you quit the game, you go back to the dash, you are going to have all the great Kinect functionality that you ever had, and you can boot a Kinect game and the Kinect will continue to work – it’ll have no impact on the game that decides off the back end that it’s going to lower the reserve that’s set in.”
On games that will benefit from the 10% GPU gain, Spencer added, “I think about games like Sunset Overdrive, that’s going to take advantage of the June [software development kit]. And they’re going to use the increased capability that lowering the reserve will have to actually make a more vibrant and alive gameplay space, so that’s where they’re going to invest.
“Even our friends at Bungie, and I’ve been spending a lot of time down there, they’re going to pick up the June SDK update for Destiny, and they’re going to up the resolution of Destiny based on this change. So I think it’s just a great time for us.”
