How Much Is It Held Back?
While iterative consoles represent major leaps in performance, their inherent limitations are linked to their base consoles. While this seems to be true of both Sony and Microsoft, there’s a greater disparity in technology when we compare the Xbox One X and Xbox One. At least Don Williamson, the founder of Celtoys and an ex-Lionhead dev, seems to think so.
“If you spend engineering time on two platforms rather than one then there will always be compromises. This has been the same since the dawn of computer games, said Williamson, in an exclusive interview with GamingBolt.
Obviously, Xbox players have had stipulations toward iterative consoles for some time—since even before the Xbox One X launched. However, developers have done a pretty good job thus far of upping game performance on the new console. Further, Williamson confirmed that the X should reach native 4K in some cases. That said, he’d rather allocate power to HDR. “For certain classes of renderer, most definitely. I would much rather see a focus on HDR with higher quality pixels,” he said.
While the specs of Xbox One X don’t stack up to gaming PCs, Williamson said that its fixed hardware benefits from optimization. This is more true of exclusives. “Desktop PCs have always come out ahead of consoles by an observable margin,” he said. “However, a console’s fixed hardware with custom modifications and matched APIs makes it easier to get predictable performance from. PC engines are a mess of compatibilities that make focusing on performance much harder. The attribution of ‘yet another sloppy PC port’ from some gaming circles is a visible reflection of this.”
For the duration of this generation, we may have to accept the “compromises” Xbox One X must make for Xbox One. Is the latest Microsoft console being held back? Maybe. But, we don’t know the potential of games vs the result. Either way, it’s hard to dispute the beauty of many titles on Xbox One X. The goal with new Xbox One exclusives, as revealed by Playground Games (rumored to be working on Fable IV), is to bring trickle-down benefits to Xbox One via a focus on the X. Time will tell the results.