The Xbox One X is a great piece of hardware engineering, and a huge step up over the base Xbox One; but I keep feeling like Microsoft is limiting its potential by mandating that every game must also simultaneously run on the base Xbox One and Xbox One S.
That said, it seems as though Adrian Chmielarz of The Astronauts, the folks behind The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, disagrees on that front; speaking to GamingBolt in an interview, he said that he doesn’t feel as though the lack of Xbox One X exclusives will necessarily hold development for it back.
“Honestly, no. Most games can scale down from Xbox One X to Xbox One, e.g. by using LOD on characters earlier, having lower res, using simpler path-finding, etc. I’ve never seen a game that couldn’t be done on a weaker version of the current gen console,” he said.
“Let’s not forget that in you really want to unleash XOX, you need to go 4K or at least use some spectacular upscale from a HD+ resolution. Meaning you already get a performance hit, possibly bringing you almost back on par with the regular XBO with 1080p.”
I suppose in a sense that checks out; at the same time, I personally can’t help but think what a game that was made exclusively for a console like the Xbox One X might look and play like. Alas, we will never know. Stay tuned for our full interview with Adrian Chmielarz soon.