Albert Penello has been with Microsoft since the beginning of Xbox—he’s been with them since before the original console even launched, going all the way back to the year 2000. He’s been with them through the highs of the Xbox 360, and the lows of the Xbox One launch, to the slow recovery that Xbox started with the One S and One X- it’s truly been an illustrious career.

But, as far as the Xbox leg of Penello’s professional life goes, that has now come to an end. Albert Penello announced today on Twitter that he will be leaving Xbox and Microsoft, noting that he will be cheering them on still, and that there are many great things to come for the brand even after he has left.

Penello’s presence was instrumental to the community that Xbox fostered, and his importance to Xbox cannot be overstated. We wish him luck in his future ventures, and we hope that Xbox will honour his work by continuing to grow.

Well today is a crazy day. I've made the decision after 18 years to leave Microsoft. To say it's been a "once in a lifetime" experience is an understatement. The team at #Xbox has meant so much to me and I'll be cheering them on – there is so much great stuff still to come.

— Albert Penello (@albertpenello) April 24, 2018

Details regarding Project Scorpio’s potency continue to emerge. Microsoft’s head of product development Albert Penello recently spoke to Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb on the latter’s podcast to discuss Scorpio’s hard drive.

As per Penello, “The hard drive in Scorpio provides about 50% more throughput than the hard drive in the existing Xbox, and that’s because we didn’t want load times to be terrible when you’re loading these big 4K textures. So we did a lot of work on a custom hard drive in our console.”

This will result in even base Xbox One titles reaping the benefits of Scorpio. “The nice thing about that is when I’m loading 1080p textures, the load times are much faster. So just by putting an Xbox One game in the Scorpio, your games are gonna load faster. Now, I think everybody knows today, load times vary from game to game, but all your load times are gonna be a lot faster on Scorpio for the existing games.”

Project Scorpio doesn’t have a price point but we do know that it will release during the holiday season. Stay tuned for more details en route to Microsoft’s E3 presser.

Though Project Scorpio is a ways off, we’re already seeing the effects of HDR and 4K gaming on the world today. The PS4 Pro is pushing for upscaled 4K and HDR while the Xbox One S features a 4K Blu-ray drive. Despite this, Albert Penello – who’s in charge of product management and planning at Microsoft Corporation – revealed how it’s still early days for these mediums.

Speaking on the Major Nelson podcast, Penello was surprised that the PS4 Pro and PS4 Slim didn’t have a 4K Blu-ray drive and said that it’s a good, albeit early, time for these mediums. “This is the thing I like to remind people when everybody asks: ‘We’re just in the beginning of this.’ So games, and game developers, and TV manufacturers, we all have to get used to it. Figure this out; what works, what do customers want.”

He further noted that it was difficult to show off the benefits of 4K and HDR without the support TV set. “Showing people what 4K and HDR looks like is really hard when you’re not watching the thing in 4K or in HDR. How do we market that and be honest. You have to fudge things a little bit to show the differences, but you want to do it in a way that’s honest. So even telling customers what it looks like, we have to go through that journey.”

You can expect some “big” announcements regarding entertainment apps that support 4K and HDR but that’ll likely come in 2017. Stay tuned in the meantime and let us know what you think in the comments.

After Microsoft announced its newest API DirectX 12, which would be coming to Xbox One and PCs in late 2015, something rather interesting surfaced regarding the Xbox One. Apparently, rumours have been going around that the next gen console sports a second GPU.

Head of planning for Xbox One and Xbox 360 Albert Penello had spoken out against the same on Twitter though, denying the existence of any additional GPU.

“I thought I had already said something about that. There is no 2nd GPU, there is no stacked GPU.”

Later on Reddit, Penello further clarified that, “I didn’t think it was festering because I thought I’d already commented on it. For some reason the DX12 announce seemed to make it resurface.”

“A missed thread in that tweet string which I think is important – I’m not interested in calling out any site. I see a lot of things on a lot of sites that aren’t right. If I see something here I try to correct it as well. My intention is not to give or take credibility from anyone. I’m just trying to set the record straight.”

Penello then added that, “It’s hard to stay on top of everything. I didn’t realize this was different then the dual GPU stuff that had gone on before which I’d said wasn’t true.

“You really can’t read anything into what I comment on or don’t. I’m not a PR guy, and I don’t have as much time to read and digest every piece of news – so I’m sporadic in things I reply to. I just happened to have a few minutes to kill today between meetings.”

He also clarified that there will be performance gains for the Xbox One as the tools improve over time. “I’m not completely versed in the nuances of DX12 and how it will impact Xbox One. I know we’re continually improving our tools for developers, as we did with Xbox 360, so you’ll see consistent performance improvements over time.”

What are your thoughts on the above? Let us know in the comments.

Planning lead for Xbox 360, Xbox One and Kinect Albert Penello has talked about the idea of the Xbox One’s storage being “open”. This was in response to the limited freedom that gamers have with their data on the console – we know that external storage solutions are on the way but no fixed release thus far.

Responding on Reddit, Penello stated that, “We have said all along our intent is to allow users to ‘bring their own’ external storage. That is still the plan that we will ship.

“I’m cautious around using words like ‘any HDD’ or ‘unlimited storage’ until the final plan is baked. That type of statement can come back to haunt me if there are exceptions.”

Which drives will be supported though? “As you guys know – not all 3rd party products are equal. There may be some cases where performance of a certain drive may make for a bad experience, or there may be some other limitation we uncover during testing of the feature. Even on 360 with our USB storage I believe we didn’t work with some older units where the transfer speeds were really low, for example.

“Besides that, you should be fine with off-the-shelf brand name drives. Until we have more details to share, I can’t get more specific. Hope that helps!”

As for whether existing equipment, like the stereo headset from Microsoft, would support virtual surround sound if the update comes, Penello said, “If we do a virtual surround update the existing equipment WILL support it.”

A new console update could be coming sooner than we think but we’ll need to wait and watch. What are your thoughts? Let us know below.

“Dolby Digital is coming post launch. This was a SW scheduling issue pure and simple, and I know people are disappointed, but we will have it. Anyone with an HDMI receiver should be fine, as we pass the uncompressed 5.1 and 7.1 through HDMI as well as DTS. Even if you have a Dolby only HDMI receiver (which I’m not sure exists), you will still get 5.1 or 7.1 sound since those receivers should accept uncompressed surround.

“For the Dolby only headsets, my understanding is that these will work but you will only get stereo audio since we only pass Stereo and DTS through the optical port. I have not tested this myself, but I’m told it works. Regardless, I understand this is an inconvenience, but again we’re going to have Dolby coming.

“This is unrelated to the HDMI-IN ‘Surround Sound’ beta. To clarify, we default HDMI-IN audio to be converted to Stereo. However, we do have a feature you can access in TV settings/Troubleshooting that enables Surround Sound in “beta” form. If you check the box, and you get Surround, you’re golden. We found some inconsistencies in STB’s during testing and decided to disable it by default to insure a good initial setup experience for people.”

The Xbox One will be launching tomorrow in 13 territories worldwide. What are your thoughts on the above? Let us know below.

Speaking to Engadget, Penello stated that, “You need the day one update. Functionally, you will be able to do very little without taking the day one update. A lot of the apps come with the day one update because they wouldn’t have even been done. You’re gonna need to take this update. It’s not gonna be really an optional thing.”

So one way or another, you’ll need an internet connection – at least this one time – to use the Xbox One when it launches on November 22nd across 13 territories worldwide.

Speaking to Polygon, Penello stated, “In the world of things I wish they had not shown at the Company Meeting because I knew I’d be asked about it later, put that at the top of my list. That is a good example, in certain circumstances [the cloud streaming] worked really awesome.

“It’s really cool and really problematic, all at the same time, insofar as it’s really super cool if you happen to have the world’s most awesome internet connection. It works way better than you’d expect it to.

“So managing quality of service, the tolerance people will have for it being crappy. Can you imagine, in this day and age, with the bad information around, and we can’t control the quality of that experience and make sure it’s good, or have to tell people they can’t do it?”

So while it’s a great idea and we may see it somewhere down the line, it might not be any time soon. “It was a grand experiment, I know we did a lot of work behind it, and we said this is one of the things where the network just has to get better before we can do it. When that happens, you’re going to have a really interesting conversation around that, can I actually run Xbox One games that way as well.”

The Xbox One launches on November 22nd across 13 territories worldwide.

“I was talking about the Sessler/Dent/Gies thing which is what I thought was causing all the ruckus, as people appeared to be connecting that back to the resolution rumors. As people have noted, and I was catching up on as I got online late tonight, they are two separate issues. There was also some other BS thing about advertising or console problems (?). Is anyone taking that stuff seriously or did that all die? Consoles are fine, and the advertising thing is completely made up. So anyway, one of them has nothing to do with us. Whew.

“As for the resolution stuff I hadn’t realized there was a new set of rumors popping up today. On that topic, and as I’ve said in my previous posts, I don’t comment on 3rd party games stuff. Not my area. So nothing new from me, I’m not going to get into the fray on the resolution stuff. G’night! For once I was just glad the other thing wasn’t about us.”

Will Call of Duty: Ghosts be 1080p on the PS4? Will it be 720p on the Xbox One? Will either fact stop it from selling millions of copies when it launches on November 5th for current-gen consoles, on November 15th/29th for PS4 in North America/Europe and on November 22nd for Xbox One? Most likely not, but the issue isn’t going to die down until Infinity Ward clarifies things real soon.

Many other features, such as the Cloud’s ability to store your save data and Achievements for instant access anywhere and dedicated servers, have been detailed. Interestingly, Penello outlines how this could technically make any Xbox One in the world belong to you, but we think that has more to do with the same information you can access anywhere rather than any actual ownership. Features such as the much-talked about Snapping, which lets you concurrently run two to three apps at once, and DVR recording are also discussed among others.

The Xbox One will launch on November 22nd across 13 territories. Do you believe it’s built for the future? Let us know below.