Aaron Greenberg: DX12 Will Affect Xbox One Provided Devs Use It, Shares Updates On Fable Legends

Aaron Greenberg, marketing team lead across 1st & 3rd Party Game Studios at Microsoft has confirmed that DirectX 12 will have a substantial affect on PC as well as Xbox One.

[hello12]

OK lol even more prove i was right. It was so obvious this would benefit the x box 1 and the PC

PC and x box 1 are x86- using similar cores to run games and both the PC and x box 1 use directx11

Why would it not benefit the x box 1 at all? Directx11 area of problems would be the same for PC and x box 1!

[BG11579]

Must be true, Aaron Greenberg said so... /s

[gfk342]

No one said that will not affect the X1, but as Phil Spencer said DX12 will not bring a "massive change" to the X1.

http://www.dualshockers.com...

Having in mind that 50% is the MOST optimist gain for PC games (and in most cases will fluctuate between 0-50), it means that X1 will not have a massive gain from DX12.

Also, the CPU power is almost irrelevant... The future of gaming stays in the GPU and not the CPU. According to a Ubisoft benchmark the PS4's GPU power is 16 times more powerful than PS4/ X1 CPU power and almost twice than the X1's GPU.

http://images.eurogamer.net...

Thus, any performance gained by X1 from DX12 will not provide major changes - for example - in the overall results of the above benchmark.

[Spid3r6]

Yet the PS4 is showing big weakness in CPU bound open world games. The Frames keep dropping is all I can say. So the fact that Xbox open up another core and will reduce overhead on the CPU side spells bigger games for Xbox One. Not only that DX12 will be adopted fairly quickly thanks to MS giving away Windows 10. Which means again that the Console of choice will now be the Xbox One so they can port over games to the PC.

[gfk342]

@Spid3r6

The weaknesses that you are mentioning are found also in the X1 version of the games.

As you said, such weaknesses are due to the fact that the games are CPU bound AND the CPUs (in both consoles) are weak.

Both consoles are built for GPGPU, namely the CPU task to be taken by the GPU. Why would both MS and Sony put a much more powerful GPU in the consoles (the PD4 GPU is 16 times more powerful).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Bear in mind the following numbers regarding the PS4/X1 power (please google if you don't believe me):

CPU:
- PS4 102.4 GFLOPS
- X1 112 GFLOPS

GPU:
- PS4 1.84 TFLOPS (which means 1,840 GFLOPS)
- X1 1.31 TFLOPS (which means (1,310 GFLOPS)

The above numbers are theoretical numbers, meaning the maximum value that each console could reach.

Having said that, DX12 WILL NOT increase the theoretical power of X1, but will ONLY help X1 to achieve this theoretical power.

In conclusion, even if X1 achieves (with the help of DX12) its maximum CPU theoretical power, it is negligible compared with the GPU power.

This is the reason that the future is for games that will be GPU bound (with the of GPGPU programming).

[rainslacker]

@Spid3r6

Yeah, I saw the weakness in ALL ONE of those CPU bound open world games. That ONE game which was rushed out the door and was broken on release on both systems and the PC because of it. It's so obviously indicative that the PS4 has a problem because of that one game, and in no way does Ubisofts own incompetence come into play since moving AC to a yearly release schedule.

Here's a fun fact, GPU compute is the new thing. It's what both the X1 and PS4 were designed to do.

On topic

Just let the software tell how much improvement it will bring. At this point, everyone is just going round and round. If DX12 is awesome and brings 50% more power to the X1, great. If not, then so what? It's getting to the point where the only way to really tell is going to be 1st party games, and neither side will admit the other has better games anyways.

[Azzanation]

It doesnt have to be major to be noticeable. DX12 will make a difference for X1 regardless of all your down playing. DX12 benefits multicore CPUs, its only works on Win10 devices and the X1 has both.

[IGiveHugs2NakedWomen]

@Spid3r6

You do know that the PS4's CPU is specifically designed to provide support to and processing for the GPU. The CPUs on these consoles were not designed to run games exclusively, rather, these CPUs were designed to run games in tandem with the GPU.

[Nekroo91]

Goddamit everyone knows it will benefit the xbox but consoles already have a low level acess API, pcs dont.

Thats why Phil Spencer said it could reach untill 50% performance boost but he was showing pc footage, and he said "it wont be a massive change on the xbox" 50% would be MASSIVE!

And dont even start with "even more prove i was right" with a Aaron Greenberg statment, hes probably one the most hated guys in the gaming industry because he is full of bullshit, or you forgot about his comments on the cloud, or even tomb raider exclusivity deal... when Phil said it was timed and even in the video for xbox games in 2015 it says "exclusive on xbox one holiday 2015"

[Bigpappy]

Would you stop posting that misinformed junk? DX12 isn't just a low level API. Do you only read what others comment on N4G? Do you not get that it allows multiple cores to talk to the GPU at once? Do you not understand that this tech was a combined effort of the most prominent companies in hardware and software design (NVIDIA, M$, Intel, ...

[christocolus]

I'm so glad to hear this confirmed once again. Fable legends is the first so i'm sure Halo5, TR, QB, scalebound, Forza6, Gears,Crackdown,Rares new ips,lionheads other project and a lot more will be using the new and improved win10 and DX12 api. Great times ahead.

[DigitalRaptor]

Depends on how "wrong" people believed you were, and what you were saying.

From memory, people were not saying it would not affect Xbone at all, but that it would not have a massive impact (as Phil actually confirmed and most sensible people believed) and that it would not help it catch up with PS4's hardware and the impact ICE team's progress on their own api. Phil didn't mention Xbox so much as PC being the benefactor the other day at the W10 conference, because he's furthering his stance that DX12 will not have as strong an impact on Xbone as on PC.

I think you might have a problem when it comes to "proving yourself right", because nobody was trying to prove you wrong in the way that you're trying to imply here.

More importantly, Aaron Greenberg is the LEAST trustworthy Xbox executive, so why you think this proves anything when it comes out of his lying, hypocritical corporate troll mouth is beyond me.

[otherZinc]

I told one of my boys 2 years ago, after Mark Cerney launched a controller; that Halo 5 & Forza Motorsport will embarrass multiplatform developers.

Now Halo 5 & Forza Motorsport 6 will be 1080p 60fps later this year. Look out!

[DigitalRaptor]

Halo 5? https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Forza MotorSport 6? I'm waiting for the downgrade. http://www.gamepur.com/feat...

You don't embarrass multiplatform developers with downgrades mate.

[christrules0041]

The Xbox One is already a closed console. Developers have already been optimizing specifically for it. They have not found out how to use the full potential of the system yet and I expect improvements even without DirectX 12. However not a big jump.

The difference is with PCs there are so many different variations of parts that it is a ton harder to optimize for every different PC configuration. This results in PCs having to power through games rather then being completely optimized like consoles. DirectX 12 will help developers code to the metal easier on PCs and may help a bit with the Xbox One considering it'll help them learn to optimize the Xbox One better.

[greenlantern2814]

Read the second part of that statement, if the devs use it. IMO games that are coming to both consoles we will not see a difference. But games that are exclusively XB1 games will be better with it.
Because I don't see devs putting any extra time or money to make a game better one one console over the other, unless of course they get money from MS or Sony to do it.

[Kal0psia]

Remember the question to developers and Phil were hardware specific, and they said no which makes sense because you can't boost hardware performance. But what "gamers" fail to realize is that Dx12 effect on XOne is software software specific with it's features sets and development tools.

So perfoamnce boost, no! But we will see some pretty cool stuff in games developmed specifiaclly for Dx12. No doubt Gears will be the first true Dx12 devloped game, or Crackdown with cloud compute. It's like Microsoft are actually using those state of the art resoruces in my opinion.

[Gamer1982]

Look at his choice of words. "devs have to make use of it." He knows fine well 3rd party devs who make non exclusives will not be making DX12 optimized games purely because PS4 does not support it. So they will make a game that runs on both consoles to save time and money on porting. Like now all 3rd party multiplatform games are DX11 compatible but don't run directly native because that would be a massive time hog. Thus to save time and clearly a lot of money they do a version that ports easily from one console to the other.

Its the same with the unique API PS4 uses too. Meaning 1st party games will outright beat any 3rd party game this generation just like with last generation. Look back at the ps3/360 generation for proof. No multiplatform game looked better than the top looking exclusives.

Also this is Greenberg to be fair the man who said MS couldn't just switch off the DRM remember?? Then when he got caught he said he doesn't really know anything about the hardware side really. So take that with a pinch of salt.

[OrangePowerz]

@KNWS I don't recall people saying it won't have any benefit at all, but it will be far less compared to PC because console games have a lot more low level coding done that already do what DX12 will do on the PC.

If the benefits are so big why did Spencer leave it out and only talked about the PC performance improvements? Instead of that the PR guys talk about?

I wonder when they finally get rid of Greenberg and MajorDbag ehm I mean MajorNelson.

[RiseofScorpio]

MS didn't requisition a $3bn custom APU for nothing its clearly apparent that it was built for DX12 and Esram the XB1 is built for the future. But its obvious you won't believe that since you're a known hater.

[pompous]

ummm, yes they did. They had to make it custom, which increases the price, because of the ESRAM band aid they
had to use. The ESRAM took up real estate on the SoC making it cost more to produce hence custom. So you can pretend all you want. Also ESRAM isn't some future proof concept, it's a band aid to fix the severely lacking bandwidth their console design has.

[headblackman]

x1 cpu is clocked at 1.75ghz (add 50% more speed to it plus allowing each core to talk to the gpu)

(just for kicks and giggles) take a pc cpu that's clocked at 3.0ghz (add 50% more speed to it plus allowing each core to talk to the gpu)

the speed and access changed, but the hardware stayed the same (this is what phil was saying). the x1 still has a 1.75ghz cpu and the pc still has a 3.0ghz cpu, but they gained speed which unlocks the potential for the the cpu to feed the gpu more power then ever before. dx12 will allow the cpu and gpu to work to pretty close to its full potential (which has never been done before (EVER!)

[OrangePowerz]

@ Headblackman

Lol add 50% more speed to it. That statement is wrong in so many ways. The first one being that you can't add 50% more speed to the CPU via DX12. The speed wouldn't change, the resource managment would change making the cores of the CPU more efficient.

Console games use low level coding or the term you might know is coding to the metal. In that case the inefficient way DX11 handels multi core CPU usage is not a factor because you make your own code that makes sure the different cores are used properly.

The goal of DX12 is to have a more efficient use of hardware in the PC (similar to what AMD wants to do with Mantle) that's more like how console games use their hardware (unless they are lazy ports).

@Waluigi

Got all of that from Mister X? The ESRAM was put into place due to the RAM they use. The console is a multimedia device and therefore they had to go with that RAM to make it easier to use all of the Snap stuff, watching TV while having other apps open and so on because these processes are more CPU heavy instead of GPU. If it would have been built for the future they would have gone with a larger memory pool for the ESRAM or another solution without ESRAM. The ESRAM solution is a compromise between having all that non gaming stuff working and having to play all games.

I won't believe that because I know better than you and have more knowledge about things. I have the tendency not to believe in lectures from armchair "developers" when they throw stuff around they read somewhere on the internet that some random person wrote. In your opinion (irrelevant) I might be a "hater", but I would say critical especially regarding to baseless PR talk.

[rainslacker]

The increase in speed isn't speeding up the hardware. The performance increase comes from how fast or how much of the information can be processed at one time.

DX12 is a code optimization, not a hardware optimization, and it certainly isn't a firmware that overclocks the hardware.

DX12 is a API that handles how code gets to, and is subsequently processed, within the CPU itself. The CPU will process it at the same speed regardless of how it gets there. Allowing more cores to do work at any given time may speed it up some however, but not by 50%, and speeding up any routine up to 50% does not mean that the program in general will be 50% faster.

If the CPU has to add one thousand variables, it will do it at the same speed as before. Those one thousand variables may now get to the CPU faster, or may be able to output faster due to more efficient routines.

Also, each core could talk to the GPU before, nothing has changed there. All DX12 does is make it so they communicate independently. Not sure how much that will mean if MS wants devs to use the ESRAM though, since the CPU and GPU don't communicate directly...or at least that's not how the X1 was designed.

[kickerz]

Major Nelson ain't that bad. He's like the crazy uncle lol. I would be mates with him.

[Seafort]

Phil Spencer has already said DX12 will be primarily for PC gaming and not Xbox.

The Xbox One will not be greatly affected by DX 12 at all.

This is what Phil Spencer said,

"On the DX12 question, I was asked early on by people if DX12 is gonna dramatically change the graphics capabilities of Xbox One and I said it wouldn’t. I’m not trying to rain on anybody’s parade, but the CPU, GPU and memory that are on Xbox One don’t change when you go to DX12. DX12 makes it easier to do some of the things that Xbox One’s good at, which will be nice and you’ll see improvement in games that use DX12, but people ask me if it’s gonna be dramatic and I think I answered no at the time and I’ll say the same thing."

If you believe anything that MS troll, Aaron Greenberg, says there is no hope for you.

[Wikkid666]

Everything in life is interpretation.

Will it help in development, yes.
Will it directly improve things, no.

Simple translation. Since the development process becomes easier... the developers will have more time to optimize the game. So in the end the game could very well have better graphics, etc. But there is definitely no special sauce here.

[OrangePowerz]

Spencer just undersold it to not give anything away to the competition. /s

[gameon1985]

But but Phil said, Phil was trolling you sony fans and that is fact. Any idiot with half a brain knew if they say the console was built from the ground up for DX12; there is no way in hell the Xbox would not benifit from it. I mean Damn, Phil is the same guy who basically Said Fack gears and then turned around and bought the ip.

[rainslacker]

Meh.

It's at the point where I don't know why it matters. The whole, "Wait until XXXXX" seems to have been the mantra of X1 fan boys since before launch. It's rather funny since they call the PS the delaystation. You'd think after a year they'd realize not to pin all their hopes on the next big thing, only to be left underwhelmed when that XXXXX finally comes.

Let the games speak for themselves. Play the games that are out now regardless of DX12...they're still good games.

[DanielGearSolid]

The DX12 secret sauce is still a thing?

[strangeaeon]

The term "secret sauce" is still a thing?

[hasamalaha]

Yes, when every other month MS fan boys have something new that is going to save the day.

[DanielGearSolid]

Since it's ever-evolving

Yea I would say the secret sauce is still a thing

[KiwiViper85]

Heard of a BigMac?

[JasonKCK]

I use salt in my sauce, it brings out the flavor.

[Spid3r6]

Just because Xbox One was built with DX12 in mind. Its all about speed not about the size of the engine.

[Moldiver]

Porche and lotus would like to have a word with you! lol

[corroios]

It simple, some Xbox gamers still think that DX12 will make the Xbox One more powerfull then the PS4. We are going to the second year with this topic.

DX12 and any kind of optmization will help the xbox reach its max of 1.30 teraflops, but there are still some that think that now the Xbox will reach 2.60 teraflops... (50 por cent). The reality is like more 4/5 frames from the Cpu at best. This was already debunked.

For the PC is gonna help because their games are poorly done and they got mega CPU and GPU much, much more powerfull then the ones on the PS4 e Xbox One, but then again we need to pay big to have them...

[strangeaeon]

No, you are putting words in peoples mouths. I scarcely see any X1 fan saying that DX12 will make the X1 more powerful than the PS4. Hardware is hardware after all. What we don't like is the fact that fanboys such as yourself want to squash ANY potential good news about the X1, as if it will somehow diminish your enjoyment of your PS4. I refuse to debate what DX12 will or will not do for the X1, because guess what? Nobody knows. Not you, not me, not anyone.

[corroios]

You must be new in N4g. scarcely see any X1 fan..., just read the coments here. Another year and another wait for.

Last year we get DGPU, ESRAM, Cloud, DX12, SDK over and over and over. It just PR crap, because the reality is that not even all exclusives were able to run 1080p and some were cartony.

Last year microsoft was forced to send engineers to other studios to help and avoid even more downgrades and this was in brand new machine with no state of the art tech or something like the monster CELL from hell.

This gen both (PS4 e Xbox) have weak average desktop CPU, GPU (better on the PS4) and a big pool of ram (againg better on the PS4).

So PR crap is needed to try and hide the fact that microsoft didnt spend the money, and they got billions, much more then sony, to build a strong console.

Its simple an average Ford will never be a Ferrari. You can paint it RED but...

Finally, what i sad was that DX12 is just another tool to make easier working with the Xbox One, but some people think that DX12 is like Nitro and will allow 4k/60 on the Xbox One.

[rainslacker]

lol, really? I see it all the time. And I'm not one to give in to hyperbole. So many things were going to be the X1 savior. The "Wait until -insert next big thing here" has been around since before the next gen release. Each time that next big thing rolls around, it always underwhelms, and we get the new thing which is going to change everything.

To be fair, I think there are some people who simply don't understand what an API is, and how it's a code thing, and not really a hardware thing.

[Mr-Dude]

Looking af the disagrees, a lot of Xbox gamers stil believe

[DoubleM70]

Look here Dude if the industry standard is 1080P 60FPS for these consoles and the XB1 can do it with easy with DX12. Well that's enough improvement right there. I'm pretty sure with further optimization the PS4 will be reaching it to.

Also from what I'm hearing the new SDK 11.3 with the ESRAM tools they already starting to reach those numbers without DX12. Anything else is gravy.

[IGiveHugs2NakedWomen]

@corroios

Dude, people have tried. I'm sure there are developers, hackers, computer science majors, and amateur tech heads here who have seen the specs for both machines and read some of what's being written and we have all come to the same conclusions:

The Xbox One's RAM configuration will not and cannot provide enough processing power to the GPU to run certain types of games. The Xbox One's GPU configuration also limits it's performance when compared to the both the CPU and GPU configurations of the PS4. Even if DX12 somehow managed to get the Xbox One to run games close to the limits of it's hardware, any such performance gains are still overshadowed by the simple fact that the PS4 has a much more graphics intensive/oriented (i'm looking for the right word to use*) hardware configuration than that of the Xbox One. It's just not possible to overcome the short comings of that hardware configuration with programming code or a GUI. That's just the way it is.

[TheCommentator]

Does anyone know if windows 10 will use less memory than what Xbox is currently running? That could, along with DX12, have amore serious performance gain than DX12 on its own.

[Bytor]

How doe's seeing effects mean substantial improvement for Xbox One.

[kpat1982]

When will people learn to just wait and see what happens, remember when the PS3 was going to run games at 1080p, 120fps, remember how the cloud was going to make the X1 4 times more powerful.

Just wait and see folks, just wait and see

[blackout]

The difference is the ps3 rain is over and Sony lied nothing close to that on the ps3. If your a game what happened on Wednesday was a megaton for PC and x1 players. MS seems to pushing versatility while Sony is pushing graphic's.

[kpat1982]

I get the feeling you kinda missed the point

[ltachiUchiha]

The ps4 & xb1 are both future proof consoles with different areas of weaknesses and strengths but not by as much as fanboys put it out to be. In the end of the day the "DEVS" are the ones who will show the true potential of each machine. Besides if u know your resources u will already know Sony strengths lie in hardware & MS in software tools. Like I said regardless of which platform is weaker or stronger, the "DEVS" will showcase each machines strengths & weaknesses especially 1st party devs since they will take more advantage of the system its creating exclusive games for.

[srd4484]

Everything is slowly coming together now for the XB1. Once Crackdown gets done we will see how powerful the cloud really is since it's being built around it. Upgrading from DX11 to DX12 will help the XB1 no doubt but it wont be "massive". You're right though, wait and see.

[srd4484]

SO DX11 on XB1 UPGRADING to DX12 will not do squat. Is that what i'm getting at reading these comments?
Only a fanboy would think that. Of course the XB1 is going to improve with this UPGRADE. Will it be 50% more? Absolutely NOT. Will it be greater than 1%? Yes. To say it will improve 0% is dumb. XB1 was designed with DX12 in mind.

[mysteryraz11]

What makes pc so spedcal that xboxone that wont getca boost? Of course it will improve the xboxone dx12 is better then dx11 so why wouldnt it boost the xboxone?

[srd4484]

because sony fanboys say so. XB1 can never improve. And nothing improves after an update :x

[Sm00thNinja]

I don't care either way but if Microsoft says it will benefit the Xbone why are we so adamant to disregard them

[frankdrebin72]

It doesn't take a huge leap of faith to believe that DX12 will most definatly improve the gaming experience on xbox one.
It does however take a huge leap of faith to HOPE and STATE with certainty that it will not help the xbox one.
Do you honestly, deep down in your heart of hearts think that Microsoft created the xbox one without ANY prior thought on what THEIR DX12 would do?
Do you honestly think that no improvements will be noticeable?
Do you think that those that created,designed and built the xbox one was shut off from their own software division?
That they never consulted, pondered and discussed how best to utilise dx12 on a games console?
To think that those people who are far far more knowledgable in their own product than you are didn't have the foresight to think of the future is foolish.

[QuickdrawMcgraw]

With so many exclusive games coming out this year for the PS4...And with very little happening for the Xbox1 game wise...We should expect announcements like this all year....even if it stretches the truth...especially when PS4 exclusive game launch dates get close....as the release date for The Order soon be upon us....

[OC_MurphysLaw]

wow...this comment section is filled with a ton of back and forth sprinkled with anger.

I think A. Greebergs comments actually ring really true. DX12 will obviously help the performance of an Xbox 1 game provided the developer uses DX12 when programming. It's not something that is going to retro activate and make old games not using it better. This is a tool set designed to help developers easily program for games being made and use the full potential of a multi-core CPU machine. I believe most are using at most one or two cores of a CPU (based on an AMD presentation from last year) and that is largely because current tools sets were structured that way. This is why things like Mantle and DX12 are so big as they are changing how CPU usage is handled.

[urwifeminder]

Great news and good to see a certain fan base get to take some time of the defensive front line of the order.

[Ps4andxb1]

In this thread -

Defensive Ps4 fantards who can't accept the xbox one will continue to get improvements.

It's like they are continually trying to justify their decision to buy a ps4.

Get over yourselves.

If you want an xbox one because you like what you see, just go right ahead and buy one.

[purp13m0nk3y]

I see a lot of misinformation and trollish comments from both sides in this thread.

I just wish for once people would do a bit of research and educate themselves as to exactly what DX12 is and what it will actually mean for games development.

The only real changes it will bring is vastly improved draw call efficency (especially for PC ) and an improved tool set for DX12 compatible hardware.

What a lot of people fail to realize is that like any API update. It's just a tool for developers to use. DX12 is like handing a craftsman a better tool.

The craftsman now has the tool available to improve his creations. To make them better and make them more efficiently. But at the end of the day, it is still down to the craftsman to create.

DX12 will only offer gains a good as devs can deliver. It's not some magical fix to instantly make all games 1080/60p.

[Bytor]

Defensive WE are just worried about your health and well being because if you stay in a delusional fantasy to long you may never come out of it.

[WildDonkey]

Like I've been saying all along laugh at me while you can cause that shit is coming to an end. Everything I have said in my previous posts will be shown to be true. Xbox One is the most powerful console ever made. I love how some of you continue to grasp at straws and try to discredit the undeniable information that is flowing out of Microsoft. E3 2015 will be the most epic few days in the history of gaming. The internet, Sony fanboys, and especially N4G and Neogaf will be in full meltdown.

[VP37]

LOL @ all you ponies..."But, but, but, Phil said DX12 isn't gonna be a big improvement for X1".

LOL...You got trolled by a MS executive! Like I said before, you think Phil Spencer is gonna talk before they're ready to talk? You think Phil is gonna let Sony & you ponies in on their plans before they're ready to reveal them? Ha,ha,ha.

Guess what boyz? GDC is coming, and make sure you have a towel to wipe away your pony tears, This is just the beginning.

http://i.imgur.com/dga1kIx....

[3ndulg3]

I hope sony hurry up and release something so you ps fanboys will have something to do.Sence windows 10 event its been really quiet from sony camp lol,some are putting up a fight tho.

[voodoogts]

PS fan boys jealous again because Microsoft released good news and great features for Xbox and Windows. Lots of hating because Xbox and PC can cross play.