Microsoft finally caved and will be selling Xbox One without Kinect bundled alongside it, but how will this affect gamers and, perhaps more importantly, developers? Well, according to Yusuf Mehdi at Microsoft, there may be more positive implications than just a drop in price.
Speaking with Polygon, Mehdi revealed that Microsoft is already talking to developers about how Kinect’s absence can help them squeeze additional power out of the console, with benefits possibly including but not limited to more 1080p games than we’ve seen up to this point. When asked directly, he vaguely suggested as much, but nothing more.
We are in discussions with our game publishers about what we might do in this space and we will have more to talk about soon.
In the past it’s been noted that switching off some of Kinect’s always-on features could free up as much as 10 percent of Xbox One’s GPU, and it seems likely this is what Mehdi has in mind. Not only that, but Microsoft’s Andrew Goosen previously suggested the company will be doing just that, without offering a specific timetable.
In the future, we plan to open up more options to developers to access this GPU reservation time while maintaining full system functionality.
With the recent axing of mandatory Kinect use, it would seem that “the future” is right around the corner, if it hasn’t arrived already. It’s not exactly clear whether or not an extra 10 percent would really be enough to get most games running at 1080p, nor do we know if such a boost would place Xbox One on a more even footing with PS4 than it has been up to this point. Microsoft would certainly love for you to interpret it that way, though.
[Via: IGN]
