Xbox Series X Will Have Dedicated Hardware-Accelerated Audio

Microsoft’s next generation Xbox console will come this Holiday season, and we’re finding out about it in bits and pieces. Things like backwards compatibility and the CPU, for example, are stuff we’ve heard about in some form or another. Now we’ll turn our attention to the sounds of gaming. While nothing official has been announced, a new panel at GDC points to the Series X having some serious power behind its speakers.

A panel will take place at this year’s GDC (Game Developer Conference) called Building Audio Gateways Into Immersive Worlds With Spatial Sound. It will be hosted by Microsoft and will focus on audio design. In the panel description “dedicated hardware-acceleration” is mentioned as being part of next generation Xbox hardware.

While it’s not clear what audio dedicated hardware-acceleration refers to, the practice usually is about using the computer’s hardware to perform certain functions at more effective levels. Most likely we’ll hear more details at this panel, which will run March 18th at GDC 2020.