Forza Developer Clarifies His ‘Highest Quality Pixels’ Statement

One of the more ridiculous and hyperbolic statements that was made about the Xbox One X came from Turn 10 Studio’s Software Architect, Chris Tector, who exulted about how the system would lead to the ‘highest quality pixels fans had ever seen’. Which is a really asinine thing to say, because a pixel is a dot on the screen- it’s a dot. That’s all it is. It’s size can be variable (and indeed, higher resolution screens have smaller pixels to accommodate more of them), but that’s literally all it is. There’s no ‘quality’ to a pixel other than its size.

As it turns out, the quote was actually taken out of context- in the video that had the quote, Albert Penello of Microsoft had edited the context out, because he had not felt that it would lead to any backlash or misunderstanding like it did. Now, Microsoft’s Larry Hryb, who was hosting a live panel for E3 Coliseum, gave Tector a chance to explain the comment.

Tector explained that he was excited about the new hardware, and he was excited at the prospect of being able to play games in full 4K without any compression or upscaling necessary, with all the assets for the games being made for true 4K- that was apparently all that he had meant.

While it sounds better in context, it’s still a bit of a… nonsensical thing to say. But of course, we’ve all said and done things that don’t make sense before, so it’s not fair to rake him over the coals for it. At least he explained what he meant by it.