Since the announcement of DirectX 12 and its impact on the Xbox One, Microsoft have taken a rather silent approach as to how the new API will actually affect the console. Of course, we already know that DX12 will bring new API for the eSRAM and make things easier for the Xbox One game developers but unlike the PC platform, Microsoft have not released any explicit benchmarks results. So why is this the case? In our last article in the month long coverage with Stardock CEO Brad Wardell, we asked him the reason behind Microsoft’s silence on Xbox One’s DX12 benchmarks.
“With the Xbox One we’re being pretty speculative right because there isn’t a game that’s using DirectX 12 on the console at this point in time, so I can’t even do a side by side comparison. Whereas on the PC we have Ashes of the Singularity. It is a game that’s been optimized for DirectX 11 and updated for DirectX 12, and you can run them side by side on the same hardware and get a 70% boost on DirectX 12 over DirectX 11.”
“So it’s pretty easy for me to say yes you’ll get a huge impact on PC, but on the console it’s all a theory. They have nothing, they don’t even know. I mean I’ve talked to the development team there on this subject for a while and it basically boils down to, we don’t know how much of an effect it will have because so much of it is in the hands of the developer.”
“I mean that’s the thing I like about being able to make a prediction, is that something that’s on a visual medium like this is that we’ll be able to revisit this discussion a year from now and it will be pretty obvious. You’ll see the games that run on DirectX 12 and you’ll be able to compare them with games that run on DirectX11 on the Xbox One and you’ll be like ‘Oh, yeah there’s quite a difference’.”
On a related note, Wardell also spoke about the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Ashes of the Singularity. Right now, the game is only confirmed for the PC platform and Brad is not sure whether the game will launch on the consoles.
“We don’t know, I don’t want to do any sacrifices on the game itself to support other platforms. We’ve seen strategy games try to do that in the past and they end up kind of gimped. We are looking at porting Nitrous Engine to the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One in the future.”
The entire interview with Brad Wardell, which will include already published information as well as new details, will go live next week.