Dev: XB1 June SDK Update Was Noteworthy

Shadow Warrior is about to land on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, after the original release on PC (which we reviewed here). We’ve spoken with Krzysztof Narkowicz, Lead Engine Programmer at Flying Wold Hog, in order to learn their development experience with the next generation consoles - this was, after all, the studio’s first console game. Apparently, it wasn’t hard at all to get the game running:

Current generation consoles are much more developer friendly. Their hardware is similar to PC and they have great amounts of memory. This means that it’s easier to get a game running. Of course they are still consoles. If you want to get great results - you have to make use of all the differences - like low level access, fast memory or the ability to focus on a single hardware configuration.

We’ve also asked about the final resolution on Xbox One - a few months ago, they stated that PlayStation 4 was already running at 1080P@60 FPS, with Microsoft’s version stuck at 900P@60 FPS; however, that was before the June SDK update, which freed some GPU previously reserved for Kinect. Narkowicz confirmed that this is a nice improvement (which is somewhat in contrast to what 4A Games said when they stated that it isn’t a flat 10% increase at all), although it was too late to implement it in Shadow Warrior.

It was a noteworthy performance improvement, but we didn’t manage to bring the resolution up to 1080p. We were finishing Xbox version and preparing for certification, so there was no time to optimize the game any further. Shadow Warrior will ship 900p@60FPS on XBox One.

Check back for the full interview tomorrow, with more interesting technical details;  in the meantime, you can read our hands-on preview of the PlayStation 4 version from EGX Rezzed.