Microsoft To Discuss Xbox Series X Hardware And Project xCloud Next Week Via Livestream
Microsoft will host a number of talks on March 17th and March 18th, but the most interesting stuff will be happening on the latter day. At 11:40am PST on March 18th, Microsoft will hold a livestream event entitled "Xbox Series X + Project xCloud = New Chapter in Gaming". It's likely that we will be hearing additional details on the Xbox Series X hardware during this event, and how that hardware will be leveraged to enable more immersive experiences with Project xCloud.
Later at 1:20pm EST, Microsoft will have another livestream entitled "What’s new in DirectX: Raytracing, mesh shading, and more", which will likely be applicable not just to the Xbox Series X, but also PCs with NVIDIA GeForce RTX and AMD RDNA 2 (Navi 2X) graphics cards installed.
With that being said, here are all of the sessions that Microsoft will be livestreaming on March 17th and March 18th:
Day 1 - March 17, 2020
- 10:00 Welcome to Game Stack Live!
- 10:25 How The Coalition built Gears 5 to be more accessible
- 10:45 Building accessibility into your game - the Xbox Accessibility Guidelines
- 11:00 Panel: The changing nature of today’s game industry
- 11:35 Panel: How to be intentionally inclusive in your game design
- 12:15 What is Microsoft Game Stack?
- 12:30 The Importance of LiveOps
- 1:00 Rare: Building Sea of Thieves with a LiveOps Mentality
- 1:35 What it means to run a game studio – a conversation with Turn 10
- 2:00 Maximizing impact and reach for your independent games with the ID@Xbox team
Day 2 - March 18, 2020
- 10:00 Previously on Game Stack Live 10:15 How inXile used creative iteration to drive Wasteland's development
- 10:40 Panel: How online services are defining the next generation of game development
- 11:40 Xbox Series X + Project xCloud = New Chapter in Gaming
- 12:40 The spark of creativity that drives Double Fine
- 1:20 What’s new in DirectX: Raytracing, mesh shading, and more
Back in late February, Microsoft confirmed that the Xbox Series X is using an AMD Zen 2-based processor and a Radeon RDNA 2 GPU with hardware-accelerated DirectX raytracing and Variable Rate Shading support. The GPU is rated for 12 TFLOPs compute performance, and can support up to 120FPS gaming along with 4K gaming at 60FPS+. Game loading times will be dramatically reduced thanks to a standard solid-state drive (SSD), and Quick Resume functionality has been confirmed to work even after a system reboot.
The Xbox Series X is supposed to launch in time for the Holiday 2020 shopping season, but it's unknown yet if the impact of the coronavirus will delay that rollout.
