The Xbox One and PS4, for all their hype, are still relatively secretive when it comes to the finer points of their technology and specifications. An Xbox One/PS4 developer who has been working in the industry for the past 7 year recently took to Reddit to answer almost all questions about both platforms and talked about the differences in game development.
The developer talked about testing code on the PS4 and Xbox One devkits and pointed out that the latter is “super wonky”. “You compile on PC and run it on your devkit. In case of PS4 it’s straightforward in case of Xbox One the devkit is super wonkey. For instance if you unplug it from power it forgets that it’s a devkit and you need to provision it again…”
What about Microsoft developing games for their older console i.e. the Xbox 360, as compared to Sony which still brought PS3 games despite the PS4 launching? The developer replied, “I would not know. Sony puts an emphasis on it, Microsoft has no policy as far as I know.”
One thing is for sure though – all those problems with the Xbox One’s storage and profile handling was only the tip of the iceberg. “The Xbox One has been a f**king mess. Everything about it. Everybody was afraid it would ship buggy but after they made a 180 degree turn it got worse as lots of their devs tried to fix up the apis. Badly.”
The developer further added that it “looks like the Windows team took over software on the Xbox One. Success has been inconsistent.”
We don’t have a hard time believing the Xbox One’s development has been problematic. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments.