xbox transcript

FIRST VIDEO - 

00:00	Hi, I'm Kevin Gamble, I'm a group program manager
00:02	on the Xbox Platform team.
00:14	No, I would look at it differently.
00:15	I look at it as we have a well rounded suite of
00:20	available consoles based on your preference as a gamer.
00:23	If you want a value and you're maybe new to the console
00:26	space and you want a value SKU,
00:28	we think we have a great value SKU with Xbox One S.
00:30	If you're one of those gamers kind of like me that wants
00:32	to run the best versions of the games I possibly can,
00:35	we have an answer there as well and that's the Xbox One X.
00:38	So the naming of Xbox One X, quality assuring team
00:40	really wasn't that involved in.
00:43	It was primarily the marketing driven efforts.
00:45	What you do see in that name is a nod to
00:48	some of our history.
00:49	We felt that with then 10 year anniversary of Xbox
00:53	kind of on the heels of that with we knew at the time
00:56	of the name we were gonna bring some original Xbox games
00:59	to Xbox One family of devices.
01:02	So it's kind of a play on words for that
01:04	and it was important for us as the Xbox One X is a member
01:07	of the Xbox One family to make that very clear in the name.
01:11	So why did we decided to price the Xbox One X
01:13	the way we did?
01:15	It's $100 more than some other systems out there.
01:17	When we really kicked off this project,
01:20	we wanted to focus on three things.
01:21	One, uncompromised gaming power, compatibility,
01:23	and craftsmanship and so the price really comes down
01:27	to the power aspect of this and at the end of the day
01:30	we wanted the best versions of the games people wanted
01:32	to play to be played on Xbox One X and we think we
01:35	delivered that.
01:36	That's not free, it comes at a cost and if you were to
01:38	build a comparable system from a PC perspective,
01:41	you would spend much more than the 499 US you would spend
01:45	on Xbox One X.
01:47	There was an interesting article in PC World,
01:49	I think it was, a week ago about a kind of a contest
01:53	to build a PC for as cheap as you could that would be
01:56	price competitive with an Xbox One X.
01:58	I think the lowest they got was about $700.
02:00	There are a couple of flaws in the way that they did it
02:03	because they didn't include a controller,
02:04	they didn't include a couple of other things but
02:07	you know, it's 700 plus dollars is how I would peg it.
02:10	So, one thing I love about where we are today is
02:14	we were targeting around the E3 timeframe about 30 titles
02:18	that would be Xbox One enhanced in our launch window.
02:21	By Gamescom in August, we were tracking about 100
02:25	now we're over 160 titles that we think will be
02:27	Xbox One enhanced.
02:29	So to your question on how games are handling
02:31	and how I feel, I haven't seen them all
02:33	so I can't really comment on it.
02:34	I've only seen a handful,
02:36	most them actually being first party.
02:38	So do I think there'll ever be a time period
02:41	where there'll be Xbox One X enhanced only games?
02:44	I think the answer's no.
02:45	We think of Xbox One X as a member of the Xbox One family,
02:49	which includes the original Xbox One and Xbox One S
02:52	and Xbox One X.
02:53	We had talked about the possibilities of Xbox One X only
02:57	games and decided strongly against that because
03:00	the member of the family aspects and so I don't see
03:02	that ever happening in this console generation.
03:05	So your question was around how come I haven't seen
03:08	more titles lean towards the frame rate versus
03:10	resolution argument?
03:12	Again, at the end of the day, our goal at the platform level
03:16	is to deliver the best kind of canvas and paints for
03:19	the users, for the developers to take advantage of that
03:21	how they best see fit for their game.
03:23	We know that games at frame rate are capable.
03:27	We've seen it with Halo, we've seen it with
03:29	Gears multiplayer, we've seen it with Forza,
03:31	so we know that's possible.
03:33	Those are importance for those franchises but really,
03:36	it's up to the game developer to decide what's important
03:38	to them.
03:39	So if they wanted to lean into that, I have no doubt they
03:41	can accomplish that.
03:42	They have decided for reasons that they had that
03:44	are probably good not to lean into frame rate but instead
03:47	to go more, use that horsepower more for visuals.
03:50	Xbox definitely hears what users say but it's again,
03:54	it's more the game developer's decision.
03:56	So even across first party, you will see some titles that
03:58	think frame rate's really important,
04:00	particularly with shooters and you'll see others like
04:02	Sea of Thieves, where frame rate at 60's probably not
04:04	important, more of a visual masterpiece is important
04:07	for them so you'll see them spending that horsepower
04:10	assets on other things.
04:12	Why is it taking so long for Xbox One X enhanced games
04:14	to come out?
04:16	The console has not shipped yet.
04:18	So I have seen kind of work because of my position,
04:21	the number of titles who have already gone through
04:24	certification and are essentially waiting for that date
04:26	to click of November 7th.
04:28	Once that date clicks, they'll all light up.
04:30	As I talked about earlier, you know, we've gone from
04:33	targeting about 30 titles in the early summer timeframe
04:37	to over 100 in August and now we're tracking over 160 titles
04:41	in our launch window that will be Xbox One X enhanced.
04:44	So what surprised me about titles that have moved
04:48	from Xbox One to Xbox One X enhanced has actually been
04:52	the ease of use they've had with porting their
04:54	titles to that.
04:56	We knew upfront that early, early on in the process
05:00	that most of these titles already had 4K assets because
05:02	of their PC versions of their games,
05:05	so we knew that would be easy and we really leaned in
05:07	heavily into the developer experience to make that
05:09	as easy as possible and we got some early wins with
05:12	some titles that have already been in the press.
05:14	Where literally in hours they were able to port their game
05:16	to an Xbox One X dev kit and run at and frame rate it
05:20	at 4K plus resolutions so we knew we had
05:22	some early successes.
05:24	I'm surprised at how excited our developers have been
05:28	to get their titles at 4K by launch and how many we've been
05:32	able to get through this quickly.
05:34	So you heard a lot kind of over the last couple of months
05:37	and how we really leaned into the ultimate
05:41	gaming performance, compatibility, and craftsmanship aspect.
05:44	The other pillar which is not actually talked about
05:46	much in the press is how much we actually leaned in
05:47	to the developer experience.
05:49	The Xbox One X dev kit has been in the press
05:52	a little bit.
05:53	That is the gold standard of dev kits.
05:55	We really leaned in hard for that.
05:57	We went out and talked to developers about what they
06:00	needed in a dev kit.
06:01	We listened, reacted and shipped them dev kits.
06:04	So it kind of started with that and then the development kit
06:08	itself and the tools they have available to help them
06:10	kind of profile their title.
06:12	We really doubled down on the developer experience
06:15	so that when they wanted to make this port it would be easy
06:17	as possible.
06:19	It's simple, you log in or you sign up at ID at Xbox.com
06:23	and you become an indie game developer,
06:25	you do your pitch to our Xbox team and you can get a dev kit
06:29	and develop your game on it.
06:31	So your question is why do I think that developers will
06:36	take advantage of the Xbox One X hardware and its
06:39	performance profile versus Kinnect a couple years ago
06:42	and the traction we had with that.
06:44	I did speak about this a little bit earlier about
06:46	you know they were already doing this on the PC
06:49	in many cases where they have 4K really didn't need that,
06:52	but if you think about just generally where consumer
06:55	technology in the industry is going, it is all about,
06:58	you know, 4K resolution, it's about ultra
07:01	high def experiences.
07:02	So it's not just about the resolution, but it's also
07:04	high dynamic ranged color, white color gamma,
07:07	spacial audio or Windows Sonic in our first party
07:09	perspective to really deliver those immersive experiences.
07:13	So I think it was easier for our game developers to also
07:15	kind of wrap their head around hey, I have this great game,
07:18	we can make it even better by taking advantage of
07:21	this horsepower.
07:22	On HDR, any time you adopt what I'll call an early
07:26	technology or a leading edge technology,
07:28	I personally expect to run into issues and we saw some
07:31	of this early with Xbox One S and media content in HDR.
07:35	We work super closely with most of the major TV
07:37	manufacturers and we go to these things we call plugfests
07:40	where we bring our consoles, we sit in a big huge warehouse
07:43	with a bunch of other televisions from a bunch of different
07:46	TV manufacturers and actually go run tests
07:48	and this finds bugs not only in our software but in their
07:51	firmware on their TVs as well and so we have a good working
07:53	relationship with all the TV manufacturers to help
07:56	flush these out and we think before the release of the
07:59	Xbox One S, we got a lot of that through.
08:01	From a content pipeline perspective for our title
08:04	developers, many of our developers, and we're actually
08:08	surprised by this, already had done 10 bit color
08:11	and the ones that didn't, we have a group internally
08:15	that does a lot of our developer outreach and they had
08:18	developed this technology which basically transforms
08:21	an SDR color range to an HDR color range
08:24	and in a lot of titles, that worked really well.
08:26	On some titles, it didn't and they decided not to leverage
08:28	it but there are number of titles that took advantage of it.
08:30	So one, fist and foremost, I'm a gamer and Halo 3's a great
08:33	example, I love those games.
08:36	For me, it's reinvogorated my interest in those games
08:39	which is great.
08:41	Fusion Frenzy's another example of a game that actually
08:43	runs better on Xbox One than it did on original Xbox.
08:45	It's just fun.
08:47	So why did we do that?
08:48	Part of it was, once we started poking around and looking,
08:51	we knew pretty quickly for some set of titles would be
08:55	easy to do and it really wasn't that hard because
08:58	essentially what we do is we trick the game into thinking
09:00	the level's different and so they actually load
09:02	those high resolution textures and paint them.
09:05	So we were able to do that.
09:11	One, we looked at and considered chasing after
09:14	was 3D television.
09:15	If you remember back CES, I don't know, 2012ish,
09:19	3D televisions were everywhere, they were kinda going
09:21	to change the industry and now you don't hear about
09:23	3D televisions at all.
09:24	4K is an example of one where we did decide to go after
09:28	and we think a lot of what will drive that is really
09:32	the immersive experiences wanted to deliver to our end users
09:35	and we really look for those technology inflection points
09:41	that basically move the needle forward to provide a more
09:44	immersive experience for our users.
09:50	All your existing games should run better on an
09:53	Xbox One X.
09:54	How they'll run better varies depending on the game.
09:56	Whether they load faster, for titles that didn't take
09:58	advantage of this technology we call dynamic resolutions
10:00	so they have a locked frame rate in the resolution scales
10:02	based on performance.
10:04	The resolution will be increased and you'll see smoother
10:07	frame rates for titles that are not frame rate capped.
10:10	The technology we took into aspects for Xbox One X
10:13	enhanced games is we used this technology called
10:16	super sampling where internally on the box itself
10:19	we will render the game at 4K and then we'll sample
10:22	it to 1080p and I can give you some assets later that
10:26	really show you examples of why super sampling
10:28	actually provides a better experience than if the game
10:31	just output at 1080p natively.

SECOND VIDEO

00:13	Fully local profiles that don't require
00:15	any Xbox Live login, games are already doing this today.
00:19	I was playing a game the other day,
00:20	I don't remember which one it was,
00:21	but one that basically plays a split screen game,
00:25	'cause I was actually achievement farming
00:27	a little bit and I was able to login with
00:29	my second controller as just a local profile,
00:31	so games are already doing this today.
00:33	Look Inversion and other global profiles
00:35	that would apply to every game,
00:38	we looked at doing this with Xbox One
00:39	when it first launched and decided not to do that,
00:42	because even Look Inversion, your example,
00:44	with flight games, Look Inversion may make sense, may not,
00:47	depending on kinda what generation you are,
00:49	but with shooters it feels very different
00:51	than when you're on the ground, then you're in the air,
00:53	so we decided not to go that route.
00:54	Downloading demo versions of existing Xbox 360 games
01:00	on Xbox One, again, we always listen to user feedback,
01:04	and if that's an important one, that's one we'll look at.
01:07	The ability to block random people
01:09	from following you on Xbox Live,
01:11	you can lock your profile down in such a way
01:13	that if you're not friends or you're
01:15	not following someone who's following you,
01:17	they don't see anything there,
01:18	so I'd argue we already have that feature.
01:20	System level background music that's officially supported
01:23	on the system, that's not a background app,
01:26	similar to what we had on 360, if I remember correctly,
01:29	that is a feature we are actively looking at right now.
01:31	If you do a calibration for HDR mode,
01:33	is a feature we're putting under consideration based on
01:36	user feedback and their challenges with HDR calibration.
01:39	The return of Xbox One Live game shows like One Versus 100,
01:44	I love what first party's doing with some of our new tech.
01:48	A good example of that is what Minecraft's
01:50	doing with Mixer and some of the interactivity there,
01:53	and what Sea of Thieves is doing with the just
01:55	kind of different style of game.
01:56	So, I would, I fully expect and actually know
01:59	that you will see first party continue
02:01	to experiment in new areas we have not gone into.
02:04	USB connections for wired and wireless headsets,
02:07	that's one I have not heard a lot of feedback on.
02:11	We will go back and look at user feedback
02:13	and decide what to do there.
02:14	So, a bandwidth monitor that either
02:16	pauses or alerts users at certain thresholds,
02:18	I think the question is more around people
02:21	who live in bandwidth capped areas versus,
02:22	Hey, I'm going to play a game
02:24	and I need some more of that throughput.
02:26	Because when you're in a multiplayer game, we give the title
02:30	the ability to basically throttle what's happening
02:32	in the background from a network perspective,
02:33	so if you're in a multiplayer game
02:34	and you need a lot of throughput,
02:35	titles already have that ability.
02:38	In a bandwidth capped area, there's always ways,
02:40	there's ways you can check your bandwidth
02:42	and how much you've downloaded
02:43	in the last N period of time.
02:45	I think you can look at it from a day perspective,
02:47	a week perspective, and a month,
02:48	but we have not taken that feature
02:51	and basically popped up a proactive message.
02:54	No, I would look at it differently.
02:55	I look at it as we have a well-rounded suite
03:00	of available consoles based on your preference as the gamer.
03:03	If you want a value and you're maybe new
03:05	to the console space, you want a value skew,
03:07	I think we have a great value skew with Xbox One S.
03:10	If you're one of those gamers kind of like me,
03:12	that wants to run the best versions of the games
03:14	I possibly can, we have an answer there, as well,
03:16	and that's the Xbox One X.
03:18	So, the game I would love to come back,
03:21	not necessarily get an enhancement,
03:22	I am a huge Dead Space fan, so I would love
03:25	to see that franchise reinvigorated.