With the recent X019, Microsoft has been making some big moves to prepare for the next generation. Xbox Game Pass is seeing several new additions like Kingdom Hearts and Yakuza while new IPs like Rare’s Everwild and Obsidian’s Grounded have been announced. However, it may be a while before we see the impact of Xbox Scarlett’s hardware on game development.
For instance, how will technology like GDD6 RAM affect games development? We had a chance to speak to My.Games’ Ivan Pabriarzhyn, who’s the franchise lead for free to play shooter Warface. He said that GDD6 RAM should fix one of the bigger obstacles for developing on consoles.
“Memory performance is one of the biggest bottlenecks when developing for a console,” said Pabiarzhyn. “GDDR6 offers a big leap in data transfer rates between the processor and RAM. This means that the CPU will spend less time waiting for access to data in RAM, which should have a beneficial effect on the frame rate. With GDDR6, developers can put more stuff on-screen without sacrificing stable frame rates, which is awesome.”
In essence, this would mean that games like Halo Infinite could offer the same large scale battles as its predecessor, only with more objects on-screen and at a higher resolution. Then again, for all the benefits that the hardware provides, it may take some time before developers fully optimize for it. Such is the case with every generation, it seems.
Xbox Scarlett is out in Holiday 2020. Sony’s PlayStation 5 is out in the same period.