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The final devkits for the Xbox One have made there way to developers, says Xbox corporate VP Marc Whitten.
In a podcast with Microsoft’s Larry Hryb, Marc Whitten said the computing giant was close to finalising all the specs and features for its next-gen console as the launch date approaches.
One change recently implemented since its E3 showing is to the graphics processing unit. The firm has upped the clock speed of the GPU from 800mhz to 853mhz.
Whitten added that the tweak was an example of how the firm was getting closer to realising the final performance level of the hardware and making sure it has “a great product for developers to build great games against”.
“This is the time where developers have the final devkits in their hands, and they’re really working closely with us and how things have come together,” he said.
“Since E3, an example is we’ve dropped in what we internally call our mono driver. It’s a graphics driver that is 100 per cent optimised for the Xbox One hardware. You start with the base DX driver, then you take out all the parts that don’t look like Xbox One and you add in everything that really optimised that experience. Almost all of our content partners have picked it up now.
“Another example is this is the time where we’ve gone from the theory of how the hardware works, what do we think the yield is going to look like, what is the thermal envelope, how do things come together, to really having them in our hands. And that’s the time you really start tweaking the knots because either your theory was right, dead on, or you were a little too conservative or you were a little too aggressive.
“An example that’s actually been really good news for us is we’ve tweaked up our clock speed on the GPU from 800mhz to 853mhz.
“It’s just an example where we really get closer to the final performance envelope of how the box works, and really making sure we have a great product for our developers to build great games against.”
