The Xbox Series X is already expected to have a significant performance advantage over the current Xbox One X, giving it room to push both higher frame rates and resolutions. According to Xbox’s Phil Spencer though, one is certainly more a priority than the other.
Speaking to Stevivor, Spencer remarked that he prefers the smoothness that higher frame rates offer games, instead of just increasing overall pixel counts. Spencer believes that games already look amazing on the current console generation, and now it’s time that they start feeling as good too.
“I think we’ve reached a point with Xbox One X in the generation where games look amazing, and there’s always work we can do to look more amazing. But I want games to feel as amazing as they look,” he said. “We don’t have that in today’s generation, mainly because the CPU is underpowered relative to the GPU that’s in the box in order to reach a feel and frame rate and kind of consistency or variable refresh rate and other things that we want.”
“As we were looking at the future, the feel of the games was definitely something that we wanted to have more focus on, not just throwing more pixels up on the screen,” Spencer added.
Although this might signal the priorities for most Microsoft-owned studios–such as Ninja Theory, 343 Industries, and The Coalition–Spencer reaffirmed that there will be no restrictions placed on developers targeting the Xbox Series X, allowing them to push whichever graphical boundaries they choose. “We want to give developers the tools to go try things that they want to go try on any of the hardware platforms and capability can be there for them to go try things,” he added.
The Xbox Series X is scheduled to launch during Holiday 2020, alongside Sony’s PlayStation 5. While Microsoft has already officially revealed their hardware, many aspects of its capabilities are still a mystery. Hopefully Xbox’s attendance at E3 2020 will clear that up.