Creating consoles is a tricky business, especially in today's world where technology is evolving at such a rapid pace.
According to Boyd Multerer, the director of development at Xbox, gamers want to buy into technology that can evolve over the years, while developers need a fixed piece of hardware to work with. With Xbox One, Multerer believes he has managed to strike the right balance.
"They want to know exactly how much RAM they can use, and exactly how much CPU, and exactly how the graphics are going to work, and that should never change," he said of developers, going on to add:
The needs of the gamer and the needs of the game developers are at direct odds, so how do you serve both at the same time? That’s the real reason why we did two separate operating systems. One is more static, aimed letting game developers ability to deliver the best games, and one is aimed at the gamer to give them an evolving, changing, updating console that will be able to support the next big social network that hasn’t even been invented yet.
Do you think Microsoft's approach to future-proofing its latest console will pay off in the long run? Will Xbox One be able to compete in several years when technology has advanced even further?
