Microsoft- Porting Windows 8 Games To Xbox One Is Very Easy

Xbox director of development Boyd Multerer says that Microsoft built Xbox One in such a manner that it would be very easy for developers to port Windows 8 games to the console, saying that “if you know how to write a game in DirectX in Windows, you already know how to write a game in Xbox One.”

“The basic box is definitely easier to develop for, and that goes a long way,” Multerer told OXM. “We spent a lot of time making sure that if you know how to write a game in DirectX in Windows, you already know how to write a game in Xbox One, and the games that are being written for Windows 8 that are using DX are porting really quickly to Xbox One. Like often in a day, maybe two, because the APIs are that similar.

“Yes, you have to tweak for the specific performance characteristics of this box, but you basically already know how to do it, if you’ve developed for Windows. In reality, everything’s more complicated than that, but yeah.

Multerer also talked about the importance of indie developers and games, and how they would find it to be a “fantastic plastform”.

“I think that the Indies are going to find the Xbox One to be a fantastic platform,” he said. “I ran the Microsoft XNA Framework, and I care tremendously about the indies, and as we were designing the Xbox One, one of my goals was to bake in support for independent developers really deeply into the operating system, so that when we did get to this part of the conversation, it’s going to flow pretty naturally.”

Watch this space for more info.

Thanks, OXM.