Xbox Series X feature to 'dramatically' change gaming, says Phil Spencer

Xbox Series X
(Image credit: Microsoft)

Xbox Series X is bound to explode all over the internet any day now, but in the meantime, the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, continues to talk up the console's killer features.

This time, Spencer took to Twitter to talk about how jumping between this gen to next-gen consoles will change gaming "dramatically" and be similar to the jump from 2D to 3D gaming. That claim is pretty exciting, but it means that the Xbox Series X has a lot to live up to.

Spencer replied to a question on Twitter about what technologies will allow the Xbox Series X to succeed. He said, "RT [ray tracing] on console will be great. I'm very focused on the work we are doing around Dynamic Latency Input (DLI).  In my view the feel of games this upcoming generation will change as dramatically as any since 2D to 3D given CPU upgrade, DLI, memory bandwidth and SSD."

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Better components equate to stronger performance --- that's easy to understand --- but what does DLI do? Well, Xbox broke it down in a blog post, describing it as "a new feature which synchronizes input immediately with what is displayed, controls are even more precise and responsive."

How is Xbox doing this? According to the team, it's optimizing the latency in the Xbox Wireless Controller. How Xbox reduces the latency on the display itself is via HDMI 2.1, which reduces frame transmission time from 16.6ms to 8.3ms. This is important, although TVs and gaming monitors all have different response times, so typically input latency will differ depending on the user.

With this, Xbox claims there will be "No more blaming the controller when you don’t get off that final hit in a fighting game." We certainly hope that's the case because those extra milliseconds could be the difference between life and death in a game like Dark Souls, or in next-gen's case, Elden Ring.

Recently, Spencer revealed that Xbox Series X game reveals were coming soon, which means we could be seeing an Xbox event as soon as May. 2020 is already off to a great start in gaming, so hopefully, both Xbox Series X and PS5 can deliver with the latter half of the year.

Rami Tabari
Editor

Rami Tabari is an Editor for Laptop Mag. He reviews every shape and form of a laptop as well as all sorts of cool tech. You can find him sitting at his desk surrounded by a hoarder's dream of laptops, and when he navigates his way out to civilization, you can catch him watching really bad anime or playing some kind of painfully difficult game. He’s the best at every game and he just doesn’t lose. That’s why you’ll occasionally catch his byline attached to the latest Souls-like challenge.