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Microsoft has given Xbox One games makers access to a seventh core on the console's processor, allowing publishers to further push the limits of the hardware. The revelation comes from hacking group H4LT, who made the discovery in a recent update to the Xbox One development tools.
The Xbox One ships with an eight-core AMD processor, but until recently, two of those cores were reserved for background processes and not available to games makers. Microsoft has now decided to give the games a little more grunt, although accessing the seventh core does place some limitations on developers.
According to gaming website Eurogamer, developers "need to give up custom, game-specific voice commands in order to access the seventh core at all, while Kinect's infrared and depth functionality is also disabled". That's unlikely to trouble many games makers, few of whom take advantage of the Kinect controller. Although a mandatory part of the original Xbox One bundle, the Kinect has now been reduced to an optional extra to keep hardware prices down, meaning games developers cannot bank on players having one of the motion/voice controllers to hand.
Developers also cannot rely on exclusive access to the seventh core, as it's still required to process Kinect voice commands. Although players are unlikely to be issuing many voice commands whilst gaming, it's still a potential roadblock that developers will need to consider.
Access to another core won't provide a step-change in gaming performance, and it will likely be some months before it's fully exploited by developers. Indeed, it is in some ways concerning that Microsoft already feels the need to squeeze more performance out of the console, which is still relatively early in its life-cycle, having only been released just over a year ago.
However, anything that gives the Xbox One a performance edge over the rival PlayStation 4 will be welcome for Microsoft. The PlayStation 4 was massively outselling the Xbox One in the first few months of sales, but reports emerging from retailers over the crucial Christmas period suggest Microsoft's console has caught up or even overtaken the Sony device.
