Q: Given the fact all of your Xbox Series X games must work on a base Xbox One, does that not mean games will be hampered when it comes to design or fidelity because developers will have to develop to the lowest common denominator?
Jason Ronald: Ultimately, that's a developer choice. And to be clear, there will be titles that are unique or exclusive to the Xbox Series X generation. The Medium is a great example of that. But ultimately, this is going to be a choice each developer is going to have to make. And in some cases, they will choose to make games that are exclusive to the next generation.
The exact same tools you use to build a game on Xbox Series X, are the exact same tools you use to build a game on Xbox One, or on PC. So we've tried to make it as easy as possible for developers to ship their game across multiple devices, but then also to take advantage of the unique capabilities of the specific device that they're on.
As an example, you might have ray tracing enabled on the Xbox Series X optimised version of the game, but you don't have it enabled on the Xbox One version of the game. Or, you might have improved gaming experiences in some areas, and in other areas, you may choose to keep them the same. So I don't view it as a lowest common denominator. I view it as giving developers the tools they need to build the best gaming experience possible and developers are incentivised to make a great gaming experience for their players just like we are. It's about finding that right balance.
Q: I know third-parties can decide to release games exclusive on Xbox Series X. But what about your own games? Take Halo Infinite for example. This is a game that works on a base Xbox One right up through to Xbox Series X. Obviously it'll look and perform better on Xbox Series X. But how can it have meaningful gameplay and design features that take advantage of what's possible on Xbox Series X when you have to make it work on a base Xbox One in fundamentally the same way?
Jason Ronald: In some ways, it's no different than some of the things we've been doing over the last couple of years with PC. We're focused on reaching the largest audience of players possible. And developers have a whole series of good techniques, whether it's things like dynamic resolution scaling as an example, that make it easier to scale up and scale down. Sometimes you'll have features that are exclusive to one device versus another.
All of these devices are shared from an Xbox Live perspective. So making sure people have great communities to play with, whether it's PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, we're giving developers the capability to have things that work similarly across generations, and that then lean into the unique capabilities of one form factor versus another.
What we've seen so far from both our first-party studios as well as third-party studios is they actually prefer this level of flexibility, because they know how to tailor their experience to provide that best experience for the player.
