Xbox One development tools, firmware, and hardware details were obtained by a nefarious hacking group at the end of 2014 yet Xbox One owners out there will be happy to hear that this may lead to improved performance for developers.
Eurogamer reports on the news in an article by the Digital Foundry team, stating that "both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have reserved two entire CPU cores in order to run the background operating system in parallel with games."
Microsoft has allowed developers access to 50-80 percent of a seventh processing core—which may partly explain why a small amount of multi-platform titles released during Q4 2014 may have possessed performance advantages over their PS4 counterparts in certain scenarios.
Eurogamer points to a slide (above) detailing Assassin's Creed Unity's graphics processing for an example of the way developers can pull more power out of Xbox One hardware.
Ubisoft Montreal's exploration of PS4 and Xbox One CPU power reveals a somewhat less than impressive generational leap from last-gen, but in the case of its cloth simulation code, we see a 15 per cent performance increase that doesn't quite tally with the 9.4 per cent boost we can take as read from Xbox One's 1.75GHz clock speed.
This may have proven the difference maker as the Digital Foundry team says Assassin's Creed Unity seems more polished on Xbox One. I was particularly taken by the transportive experience in Assassin's Creed Unity, so be sure to read our review here.
[Image Via Eurogamer]
