Microsoft: DirectX 12 will not dramatically improve Xbox One

Many gamers expect Microsoft Corp.’s DirectX 12 application programming interface to bring dramatic performance and graphics improvements to the company’s Xbox One game console. According to Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox division at the company, the DX12 will bring certain improvements to the platform, but they will not be truly dramatic.

“I got asked early on by people if DirectX12 is going to dramatically change the graphics capability of Xbox One, I said it would not,” said Mr. Spencer in an interview with The Inner Circle. “I am not trying to rain on anybody’s parade. The CPU, GPU, memory that are in Xbox One do not change when you go to DirectX12. DX12 makes it easier to do some of the things that Xbox One is good at, which will be nice and you will see improvement in games that use DX12.”

Microsoft DirectX 12 API will allow game designers to access hardware resources of graphics processing units on a “close-to-metal” level, which will result in higher efficiency and increased performance. In addition, the new API will allow games to significantly boost multithread scaling and CPU utilisation. While for personal computers low-level access to GPU hardware and great utilisation of multi-core/multi-thread microprocessors will be brought by DX12 for the first time, the Xbox OS for Xbox One has supported both capabilities from the start. DirectX 12 will likely make things more efficient on Xbox One, but it is illogical to expect truly significant boosts in capabilities or performance from the new API alone.

Still, DX12 will make it easier for developers to address both Xbox One and Windows-based PCs.

“[DirectX 12] will ease development, especially for guys who are doing games on both PC and on Xbox because if the APIs are the same, there is less work for studios to manage the differences between platforms,” said the head of Xbox division at Microsoft.

While DirectX 12 API will not bring all-new features to Xbox One, as game developers learn how to better use capabilities of the console’s hardware, games will get considerably better looking going forward.

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KitGuru Says: Looks like DirectX 12 will not automatically let developers render their games in 1920*1080 (1080p) resolution at 60fps. However, since it will make things more efficient, we should expect improvements in the quality of graphics on Xbox One over time.

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