Gears of War: E-Day studio finds a way to get more performance from Xbox Series S - one that other Xbox games could probably use
As a first-party Xbox title, Gears of War: E-Day is under pressure to look good and run well on Xbox consoles. This is especially challenging to do on Series S, due to the console's limited computing power compared to Series X. But developer The Coalition has discovered a clever way of circumventing the Series S' limited memory pool. Read more
Gears of War: E-Day has discovered a way to boost performance on Xbox Series S, a console with less computing power than its counterpart, the Xbox Series X. The primary challenge lies in the limited memory pool of Series S, which requires a significant amount of system memory (RAM) to handle densely-detailed environments. To overcome this, The Coalition, the developer behind Gears of War: E-Day, offloaded some data onto the console's ultra-fast NVMe SSD storage drive.
This NVMe SSD can act as an additional RAM module, allowing the game's engine to stream assets more smoothly. The game then swaps data between RAM and NVMe as needed, prioritizing frequently used data in RAM and storing idle data on the slower NVMe. This approach effectively provides an extra gigabyte of usable system memory. Digital Foundry, a gaming technology analysis website, reported on this technology, which was co-developed by Xbox's Advanced Technology Group.
While the execution is unique to Gears of War: E-Day, the concept of using NVMe SSD as a second tier of RAM to increase performance on Xbox Series S could potentially be replicated in other games. However, the success of this approach depends on whether future Xbox games can leverage this technology in the face of aging console generation and ongoing memory shortages.
Written by urgent.news from Eurogamer's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
