Sniper Elite Dev Imagines How New Xbox One Upgrade Might Work

Recently, Xbox boss Phil Spencer discussed new Xbox One hardware possibly coming before the current console generation is over. His comments inspired much discussion in the industry, and now the CEO of Sniper Elite developer Rebellion has weighed in with his thoughts on how releasing new hardware before a cycle is over might impact game development.

Jason Kingsley told VideoGamer.com that he doesn't know what Microsoft has planned, but he still thinks the idea of a mid-cycle hardware upgrade path is a "really interesting" concept--though it's not without its potential drawbacks.

"Yes, you will have to make the game to work on the existing, let's call it lower-spec Xbox," he said. "You would also, depending on how the operating system works, have to anticipate the upgrade... We're already working on Xbox One titles and we don't know if there is another one coming. I guess at some stage we might know."

Kingsley said one improvement could be in the area of framerate.

"It might just be that it would be a frame rate improvement, and it might just happen out of the box," he suggested. "'This one runs at a solid 30fps and with the new machine it runs at a solid 60fps.' That I could imagine would be of value to some people."

Spencer's comments, made during an event earlier this month, were picked up and widely discussed in part because the concept of mid-cycle hardware upgrades is basically unheard of in games. It remains to be seen how it will all work, but Spencer sounds determined to make it happen.

"I've said the 'end of a generation' and this step-function that happens is not something I embrace," he said earlier this month. "I think it's something we can do better at."

Spencer's vision is for the games you buy today to stay with you on new hardware, just as the music you may have purchased years ago on a now-outdated device can move forward with you as you buy new hardware.

"I see it in music, I see it in books, I see it in movies. When I buy digital content, that digital content stays with me and I'm able to use it when I got out and get new devices," he said.

For Kingsley, he said there are too many unanswered questions at this point to know for sure how it will all shake out.

"A lot of these situations, the devil's in the detail," he said. "It depends whether they upgrade the OS. It depends how faster it is and what they've done. Is it faster in an automatically accessible way, or do you have to specially code? You could imagine a situation where they say, 'Well, you will do free patches [to make existing Xbox One games compatible with the new console].'"

This could be a problem, as having to work on multiple versions of the same game for different specs would theoretically require more development staff, in turn adding costs to the development pipeline.

"It would be quite a reasonable impact on the dev team if they're already working on a new project, then Xbox 1.5 comes along and Microsoft needs us to do an upgrade to it," Kingsley said. "You've got to go back to the old code, recompile it or whatever. I don't think they'd want to do that. That wouldn't work."

Finally, Kingsley said platform-holders like Microsoft (and Sony, which has not announced any plans for PS4 hardware upgrades at this point) are smart groups and it's very well possible that the companies have answers to his questions and concerns.

"There's a lot of very, very clever people there, and anything we can think of they can think of, and I'm sure they'll have thought this all through and they'll work out a strategy," he said. "So if it means we've got more people playing more games at a better resolution and faster frame rate then that's just brilliant. The more people playing games, the more target consumers we've got, the more people we can entertain and the more games we can sell, so it's good as far as I'm concerned."

Head to VideoGamer.com to read the full story and get all of Kingsley's quotes.

Rebellion's current project is Sniper Elite 4, a World War 2 shooter due to launch this year for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.