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Developers hoping to build games designed solely to take advantage of Microsoft’s latest hardware will be disappointed as the Xbox firm has stressed that they will not release Scorpio-exclusive games.
GamaSutra reports that Xbox marketing boss Aaron Greenberg tweeted that there will be no titles locked to the upcoming device, which was announced during Microsoft’s E3 2016 press conference on Monday.
Great thing is with Project Scorpio as part of #XboxOne family all your games will work, no Scorpio exclusives, so no one gets left behind
— Aaron Greenberg 🙅🏼♂️💚U (@aarongreenberg) June 14, 2016
This does complicate things for devs wanting to make more visually impressive titles, taking advantage of Microsoft’s promise of ’true 4K gaming’, since they will have to ensure all games are still compatible with the standard Xbox One and the new, slimmer Xbox One S.
Microsoft’s Phil Spencer says dynamic scaling may be the solution for some devs. Speaking to GamesIndustry, he pointed to Halo 5 as an example.
“When Halo 5 runs it wants to max out at 1080p/60 frames per second or highest resolution/60 frames per second,” he said. “As scenes get more complex, the vertical resolution will shrink… to keep the 60 frames per second.
“When that same game’s running on Scorpio, because of the compute capability, it’s effectively is going to run at its max resolution the whole time.”
Spencer also said that devs will be able to release 4K updates for previous games.
“If they’re built a 4K version for PC already for some of their games, they might go back and decide to enable a 4K version for the Scorpio Xbox when it launches,” he said.
Spencer went on to liken the need to cater to both Xbox One and Scorpio to the PC market, pointing out that devs build games to minimum, recommended and high-end specs simultaneously. You can read more about this comparison here.
We spoke to developers about the opportunities presented by Project Scorpio, and they were cautiously optimistic.
